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BOY'S AND GIRL'S LIBRARY

No. XXII.

UNCLE PHILIP'S

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE CHILDREN ABOUT THE

TREES OF AMERICA.

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THE

AMERICAN FOREST;

OR, i

UNCLE PHILIP'S

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE CHILDREN

I

ABOUT THE

TREES OF AMERICA.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1855.

Entered, accoramg to Act of Congress, in the year 1834, by

Harper & Brothers,
In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York

''J-^''L^^^'^s^%\

• ••

• •

• • • • '.

TO THE

MESSRS. HARPERS, IN NEW-YORK.

My Dear Nephews : —

As you expressed a wish in your last letter to

have our Conversations on Trees, of which I spoke

on a former occasion, I now send them. Others

may not like trees as much as your old Uncle does

and may therefore conclude that the children and

I might have found a more agreeable subject ; but

I believe it did not prove tedious either to them or

me. Indeed I have often been struck with the fact

..»4hat children seldom become weary of having their

Q-. attention directed to the objects of nature. I hope

Xjjit will not be deemed time misspent to have taken

^, some pains to acquaint t|jem with the wealth and

^ beauty of those magnificent forests which spread

f^ -over the broad surface of our dear country. Amer-

"" . ican children ought to know something of Ameri

can trees : and when I look around upon the

8 ADVERTISEMENT.

wanton destruction of trees, of which too many
of our countrymen are guilty, I confess that I am
anxious to teach ray dear children how to find in-
terest in a tree, and to love it ; it may make them
pause ere they cut it down without necessity.
You must excuse the natural feelings of age, and
forgive an old man for pleading earnestly to have
an old tree spared. I would have children's chil-
dren sit under the same shade which sheltered
their fathers. Good-bye.

Your affectionate

Uncle Philip.

Newtown, Sept. 1, 1834.

CONTENTS.

CONVERSATION I.

The Boys come w Visit Uncle Philip, and they get into a Con
versation about freee, and their uses — Uncle Phihp describes
the Oaks Page 13

CONVERSATION II.

vscle Philip and the Children talk about Nuts and Hick
ories -39

CONVERSATION III.

iJncle Philip tells the Boys and Girls about Maple-trees, and
how to make Maple -sugar 63

CONVERSATION IV.

Uncle PhiUp tells the Boys and Girls about Magnolias and

jaurels, and other beautiful Trees; and shows them why

hey ought to be grateful to God for such Trees, although

they are not useful, as well as for Oaks and Maples - - 85

CONVERSATION V.

Uncle PhiUp's Visiters learn how to make Canoes of Birch-
bark ; and how to make BirdUme ; and the Uses of Oil, and
the Olive-tree — Uncle Philip gives them a short Lesson in
Pohtical Economy 117

CONVERSATION VI.

Uncle Philip and his Young Friends talk about Poplars, and
Aspins, and Persimmons, and Wild-f^herries, and the Cabbage-
tree, and Chestnuts, and Chincapins — Uncle Philip, among
other things, describes the great Chestnut on Mount Etna,

called the Chestnut of the Hundred Horses 149

B

X CONTENTS.

CONVERSATION VII.

Uncle Philip describes to the Children the virtues of Beech-
nuts, and of Ash-trees ; also of the Mulberry-tree, on the
Leaves of which Silk-worms feed ; he tells them a Story, too,
of a Poet, and how V7illows were first brought into England
by means of a Basket of Figs 181

CONVERSATION VIII

Uncle Phihp and his httle Friends contmue their Conversation
about Trees ; he tells them of the different kinds of Elm, and
Lime, and of the numerous Family of the Pines ; and of a
vast Trough that was made once in Switzerland, reaching
from the top of a Mountain to a Lake nine miles distant, 207

CONVERSATION IX.

Uncle Phihp teaches his little Visiters how to make Spruce-
beer ; and goes on to tell them about the different kinds of
Spruce-trees, and the Cypress and Cedars ; after this he de-
scribes the Larch, or Hackmatack, and then brings his Con-
versations upon the Trees of America to a close - - 235

.K#^^

The Oak.

/ ••'

CONVERSATIONS

ON

THE TREES OF AMERICA.

CONVERSATION I.

The Boys come to visit Uncle Philip^ and
they get into a conversation about Trees,
and their uses. Uncle Philip describes the
Oaks.

" Well, boys, you have come to have an-
other talk with your old friend the traveller,
have you? I am glad to find that you re-
member me when you have nothing to do but
enjoy yourselves."

" Yes, indeed. Uncle Philip ; we do remem-
ber you, and all the wonderful things you
have told us ; and we like to come and listen
to you, for we know that whatever you tell

14 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

US is true, and will make us wiser and better
if we take care not to forget it. And so
Uncle Philip, as it is Saturday afternoon, and
it is too warm to play, we all agreed that we
would come and ask you to talk to us about
some of the things that we ought to know,
to be as wise and as learned as you are."

" Ah, boys, I hope you will live to know a
great deal more than I can teach you. When
I was a boy, it was not so eaisy to learn as it
is now ; there were not so many schools, and
people did not think so much about giving
their children a good education, and more
than all this, there were not a quarter so
many good books written and printed for
young folks as there are now. But seat your-
selves here in the shade, and I will try to think
of something useful to talk about, with you."

"Oh thank you, thank you, kind Uncle
Philip ; that will be a great deal better than
running about in the hot sunshine ; this great
tree will serve as a large umbrella for us all,
and here we shall be as happy as so many
little kings."

" I like that name you have given to the
tree under which we are sitting ; it is indeed
a natural umbrella, and shelters us from the

TREES OF AMERICA. 15

burning glare as completely, as any contri-
vance we could imagine ; yet it costs nothing,
and puts on its thick covering of leaves sum-
mer after summer, without any assistance
from us, who receive so much benefit from it ;
and see, boys, how bountiful God is to us ; he
makes the sun to pour down his hot beams to
ripen the corn, and the fruit, and every thing
that grows in the earth, for our use ; and the
large trees to give shade for us when the heat
is greatest, or else we should hardly be able
to bear it."

" But these huge trees must be good for
something besides shade, are they not, Uncle
Philip? We know that apple-trees, and peach-
trees, and all the other trees that bear fruit
are useful, but they are not near as large as
the great trees down by the river, and over on
the other side of the bay ; but these have no
fruit, and some of them are not good even for
burning; yet I suppose they are good for
something."

" You may be very sure of that, boys ; God
has created nothing in vain, though we may
not be able always to see what things are
good for. There are a great many things in
the world that nobody has found out the use

16 " CONVERSATIONS ON THE

of as yet, but thej- have their uses, and good
ones, too ; and people are finding them out
every day. As to the trees, I think I can soon
convince you that many of them are useful
enough, though they don't bear apples, or
peaches, or cherries. What sort of a tree is
this under which we are sitting?"

"A chestnut; we gathered a great many
nuts from it last fall, when you were gone to
New- York, and they are almost ripe again
now."

" Well, boys, I suppose you found the chest-
nuts very good eating, although not quite as
large a^ the peaches. Now tell me another
thing ; you have been up in the pasture-lot
this morning, and seen one of the men at
work ; what was he doing ?"

" Splitting rails for the new fence."

" Well, the logs that he was at work upon,
are chestnut, and the handle of his axe was
hickory, and the beetle or mall that he drove
his wedges with, was oak ; so there you see was
the wood of three large treqs made useful in
one single operation. And now, boys, as we
have begun to talk about t;iees, if you like I
will tell you something about the principal
trees that grow in our country, and the things

TREES OF AMERICA. 17

they are good for, and this will be a very good
subject for our conversation. What do you
think of the plan ?"

" Why, Uncle Philip, trees are not as curi-
ous as insects ; but we know very well that
whatever you tell us must be worth knowing,
and that you talk to us for our good and
pleasure more than your own : so we will
listen to you very gladly, and thank you for
your kindness to us."

" You must not expect that I shall be able
to mention all the trees that grow in the
United States ; there are some that have never
been described at all, and if I knew every one
of them, the number is so great that it would
take up a great deal too much time to tell you
even a little about each. More than a hun-
dred and forty different kinds of large trees
have been already discovered and examined,
growing in North America, and most of these
are to be found in the States : so you see that
it would be impossible for me to describe them
all to you in a great many conversations ; but
1 will try to tell you something about the
most useful and remarkable, and when you
are older, you can read more about them, and
about the others too, in books that have heen

18 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

written on purpose. Can you tell me now
which is the most useful tree in the world ?"

" The most useful, Uncle Philip ? I think
I have heard our schoolmaster say it was
cocoanut."

" Well, boys, I suppose it is ; the natives
of the islands in the Pacific Ocean, where the
cocoanut is found, make use of every part of
it for one purpose or another ; and this single
tree supplies them with food, drink, clothing,
and materials for building ; the wood is ex-
cellent timber, and good fuel ; the leaves
are used to make the roofs of the houses ; the
fibres and the soft inner bark are made
by the natives into cloth ; and you know how
good the nut is to eat, I dare say."

" But, Uncle Philip, how do they get theii
drink from the cocoanut ?"

" Why, the water, or milk as some people
call it, that fills the hollow of the nut, is most
delicious ; better than all the beer and cider
in the world, because it is pleasant to the
taste, and when fresh does not make people
drunk. But it is time for us to come back to
the trees of our own country."

" Stop a moment if you please, Uncle Philip ;
I want to ask one other question You said

TREES OF AMERICA. 19

that the natives of the islands where the co-
coanutis found make the roofs of their houses
with the leaves ; I should think they would
make but a sort of rery poor covering ; they
cannot keep the rain out, can they ?"

" They could not, indeed, if they were such
leaves as you have been used to see ; but they
are immensely large, and quite thick enough
to serve all the purposes of a roof, as well as
shingles, or even slates. Now can you tell
me which is the most useful tree in this
country ?"

"Pine is very much used for carpenters'
work ; is it the pine, Uncle Philip ?"

" No, boys ; though the wood of the pine is
good for a great many things, it is not as
valuable as that of the oak, nor indeed is any
other wood that grows in this country applied.
to as many and such important uses ; and
I suppose that the oak, as it is to the eye the
grandest, must also be pronounced the most
useful of trees. The wood is very firm and
solid, and lasts a long time ; and for some
purposes there is no other kind of wood in the
world that can compare with it."

" I have heard the miller say, that oak tim-
ber is the best for mills, and all kinds of car-

20 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

penter-work that are much exposed to get
wet ; so I suppose it is good for building ships,
is it not, Uncle Philip ?"

" Yes, excellent ; and the knees, and frames,
and all the large and most important timbers
of vessels of all kinds, are generally of this
wood. In England, where trees are not as
plenty as they are with us, oaks are worth a
great deal of money, and people make a busi-
ness of planting them on purpose for the
government. You know that the English
have more ships of war than any other nation
in the world ; and they take a great deal of
pains, and go to great expense, in getting the
best timber they can find for their navy."

"Ah, then, I suppose they do not burn oak
wood in England, as we do ; it would cost too
much money."

" No, indeed ; wood of all kinds is too
scarce in that country to be much used for
fires ; but they have plenty of coal, and in
some parts of the country they burn a great
deal of turf Wood is becoming scarce in
some parts of the United States, too, near the
great cities ; and there is not near as much
oak used for fuel now as there was several
years ago. In Philadelphia and New- York

TREES OF AMERICA. 21

most of the fires are made of coal. But we
must come back to our oaks again, boys ; can
you tell me some more of the uses to which
they are put ?"

" 1 know that the bark is used at the tan-
yard for something ; but I do not know what
good it does to the leather."

" Well, then, I will tell you ; oak bark con-
tains a great deal of ta7i7ii7i, which has the
property of giving consistence and toughness
to skins, and making them last much longer
than they would without it ; the tanner puts a
quantity of the bark, ground up fine, into water,
which after a while becomes very strong of the
tannin ; then the hides are soaked in this water
for several days, and so they become leather,"

" Ah, then. Uncle Philip, that is what the
boys dip their hands into the tan-vats for,
when they are afraid of getting a whipping
at school.'*

" Well, I suppose it is ; but it is of no use,
for the whipping will hurt just as much ; they
had better behave well and never get whipped
atall."

" Uncle Philip, is not the bark of the other
trees good for tanning ?"

" Yes ; most of the barks have a portion of

22 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

ta7inin in them ; but none have so much of it
as the oak, and the tanners never use any-
other when they can get oak. Did you ever
taste the fruit of an oak."

" The fruit, Uncle Phihp ? I did not know
that oak-trees had any fruit. I thought they
bore nothing but acorns."

" Well, what is an acorn but the fruit of the
oak ? I suppose you think nothing deserves
to be called fruit unless it is very nice like a
pear or an apple. But did you ever taste
an acorn ?"

" Not very often, I must confess ; they are
very bitter."

" But the hogs eat them gladly enough ;
and I have heard it said, the flesh of those
that feed mostly on acorns is of a better flavour
than any other. It is not so solid, but it is
sweeter. I have read, too, that in ancient
times acorns were eaten by men; but I sus-
pect that it was from necessity, and not choice.
If you could get nothing else, I dare say you
would be glad enough to get acorns, and per-
haps come to like them in time ; and if you
had never had any thing better, you would
think acorns quite good enough. I suppose
you have heard of the Greenlanders, have
you not ?"

TREES OF AMERICA. 23

"Oh yes, Uncle Philip; we read about
them in the ' Tales from American History.' "

" Then you know they are a very poor
people, and live chiefly on the rank flesh and
blubber of whales, and seals, and such oily
creatures. Well, a young Greenlander was
taken some years ago to Denmark, where he
was fed upon what we consider very nice
food, such as beef, and potatoes, and mutton,
and fish, and good wheaten bread ; and he
seemed to like all these things very well, too ;
but one day he happened to find a large can
of lamp oil, and took a long draught of it,
saying, ' he wished he was in his own country
again, where he could get as much as he
pleased.' "

" What a strange taste !"

" Yes, it seems strange to us, but it shows
what hahit will do ; and so if you had been
eating acorns all your life, I dare say you
would think it as hard to have none, as the poor
Greenlander did when deprived of his whale oil.
In some of the Southern States, that is Virginia,
North and South Carolina, and Georgia, there
is a kind of oak called the chincapin oak,
which is rather a shrub than a tree, for it
Rever grows more than seven or eight feet

24 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

high ; but the acorns it bears are very good
and sweet ; almost as good as the chestnut ;
and there are some other kinds that have sweet
acorns."

" Oh, Uncle Philip, I have heard of those
chincapins : there was a boy at our school
from North Carolina, and he used to tell us a
great deal about them ; he said they were as
good as a hazel-nut."

" But it was the real chincapin that he told
you of, which is a sort of chestnut ; this that
I have just mentioned is the chincapin oak.
By-and-by, when we come to talk of the chest-
nuts, you will hear more of the chincapin.
But to return to the acorns ; I have heard that
all acorns lose much of their bitterness when
they are boiled, but I never tried the experi-
ment : you can if you like, the first time you
go into the woods."

" I will go and get some to-morrow ; sister
wants some of the cups for her doll's tea-
table."

" Yes, they make very pretty little tea-cups ;
in old times, when people believed in fairies,
the cups of the acorns were supposed to be
used by them at their feasts and suppers. But

TREES OF AMERICA. 35

we have not done with the uses of oak-trees
yet. Do you know what cork is ?"

"Oh yes, Uncle Phihp, we know very well ;
it is a very light wood, and very soft, and full
of holes like a sponge, and people cut it up
into corks to stop bottles with."

" Very true, boys ; but do you know where
people get it, and how it grows ?"

" Why, I suppose it grows like any other
tree ; but I do not know where."

" Well, then, I will tell you; it is the bark
of an oak."

" Of an oak. Uncle Philip ! We have seen
oaks very often, and the bark did not look
much like cork."

" Ay, but this is a different kind of oak,
that is not found in this country, but in Spain,
and the south of France, and in Italy ; you
can find those countries on your maps when
you go home. You have no idea of the vast
quantities of cork that are used every year ; it
is said that France alone consumes 120 mill-
ions of cut corks."

" But why does not this oak grow in
America, Uncle Philip? I should think it
would be better to make our own corks than

26 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

to go to France and Italy for them, would it
not ?"

" Why the cork oak does not grow here
I do not know: I should suppose that the
climate of Florida, which you know is the
most southern part of the United States,
would agree with it very well ; and as cor]-
are so useful, and so much used, I dare say
the trees will be introduced by-and-by. But
just now it is easier and better for us to
cultivate wheat, and other things which do
grow in our country, and send them to Spain,
and France, and Italy, in exchange for corks,
than to raise the trees for ourselves."

" Uncle Philip, are the oaks that do grow
in this country useful for any thing else ?"

" Oh yes ; a very good colour or die is got
from the bark of the red oak, and the branches
of oak-trees make the best kind of charcoal ;
that which is used for making gunpowder.
Powder, you know, is made of sulphur or
brimstone, and saltpetre, and charcoal. Be-
sides these, some kinds of medicine are ex-
tracted from the leaves ; and the very best ink
is made from the oak-apples."

" Oak-apples, Uncle Philip ! what are they."

" They are little balls of a brown colour

TREES OF AMERICA. 27

and nearly the size of an egg, that are often
found sticking to the branches; they are
caused by a fly which pierces the bark and
leaves its eggs in the hole ; in a little while
the bark swells, and forms the oak-apple, or
gall, as some people call it ; the diers make
great use of these galls ; I dare say you have
picked them up very often ; they a^ full of a
sort of dusty pith. And now, boys, I believe
I have told you the principal uses of the oak ;
if you like I will describe some of the different
kinds to you."

"Are there many different sorts of oak,
Uncle Philip ?"

" Yes, a great many ; but they differ from
each other mostly in the shape of the leaves.
In North America, forty-four kinds have been
described, some of which bear fruit every
year, and some only once in two years. The
principal kinds are the white oak, the black,
the red, and the live oak ; the others are
mostly varieties of these four.

"The white oak is found chiefly in the
Middle States, and is most abundant in Penn-
sylvania; it grows seventy or eighty feet
hisfh, and the trunk is from three to seven
feet thick ; the bark is white, with large black

28 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

spots ; the acorns are large and sweet ; and
the wood is the best and the most used of all
the American oaks. It is preferred to all other
wood for the timbers of houses, bridges, and
mills ; for the frames of coaches, wagons, and
ploughs ; the spokes and felloes of wheels,
and for the backs of chairs. Wlien the trees
are quite young, the wood splits well, and is
easily bent, and is used to make baskets, sieves,
and whip-handles ; and in some parts of the
country vast quantities of it are made up into
pail-handles, and axe-handles. It is very
much used, too, for fences, and it is the only
kind of oak wood that is proper for staves of
wine barrels. You would be astonished if T
were to tell you how many millions of staves
are made every year of white oak ; fifty-three
millions were exported in one year to the
West Indies alone. White oak is very much
used, too, in ship-building, but it is not so
good as the timber of the live oak.

" The live oak grows only in some parts of the
Southern States; it is best in Florida and Louis-
iana ; it requires a mild climate and sea air,
and is never found more than fifteen or twenty
miles from the shore. It seldom grows very
large, the height being in general about forty-

TREES OF AMERICA. 89

five feet, and the trunk is from twelve inches
to two feet thick. The bark is hard, thick,
and black, and the wood heavy, close-grained,
and of a yellowish colour. It is chiefly used
for ship-timber, being in fact too good to be
made use of for any thing else ; it grows very
slowly, and is getting scarcer and scarcer
every day. The acorn is longer than that of
the white oak, and the leaf is of a quite differ-
ent shape.

" The black oak is the most common of all ;
it grows in every part of the United States,
except at the remote north, and in all kinds of
soil. It is the largest, too, for it stretches up
to the height of eighty or ninety feet, and the
trunk is often five feet in thickness ; the bark
is very rough and black, and the wood is
reddish and coarse-grained. It is the bark oi
this kind that is most used in tanning, be-
cause it is the cheapest, and has the most
taniiin. The inner bark is called quercitron^
and is very much used for dying ; the colour
(t gives is a broAvnish yellow. The wood is
employed in building, for fences, and in
making staves and heading for flour barrels
(fcc. The acorn and leaf are difierent from
those of the white and the live oaks.

30 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

" The red oak is very common, too ; it
grows to the height of about eighty feet, and
is two or three feet thick ; the leaf is cut into
very deep scallops, and it bears the largest
acorns of all the oaks except one ; hogs are
very fond of these nuts, and so are horses and
cows, but the wood is not good for much ; its
o-reatest use is to make staves for all sorts
of barrels except those which are intended for
liquors.

" These are the four principal sorts of oaks ;
but, as I have already told you, there a great
many varieties ; there is the mossy cup oak,
so called because the cup has a fringe round
its edge ; the over cup white oak that bears
an acorn almost as large as a hen's egg ; the
post oak, with a very small sweet acorn much
eaten by Avild turkeys and squirrels ; the over
cup oak, the acorn of which is completely
covered up in its cup ; the willow oak, with a
long slender leaf like that of the willow ; the
running oak, which is the smallest known in
the world, being only from sixteen to twenty
inches in height ; the water oak, with leaves
shaped like a pear : and several others."

"Then you cannot always tell an oak-tree
by the shape of the leaf, Uncle Philip; T thought

TREES OF AMERICA. 31

all the leaves were scalloped as though some-
Dody had been clipping large pieces out of
them with a pair of scissors."

" N05 boys ; for the leaves of the different
kinds are all very unlike each other; you
may know the oak-tree in general by- the
roughness and thickness of the bark, and by
the stately look of the tree itself, with its
straight strong trunk, and its wide spreading
branches ; but, after all, the acorn is the only
sure mark to distinguish it by."

" Do not oaks grow very large sometimes,
Uncle Philip ?"

" Yes, sometimes ; when one is left standing
a long, long time, and there are no other trees
near it, so that it has a large piece of ground
to itself The laro^est I ever heard of was in
a part of Great Britain called Dorsetshire ; it
took a rope sixty-eight feet long to go round
it, and when it was very old, and the trunk
became rotten and hollow, they made a large
room in the hollow part, which a man occu-
pied as an alehouse or tavern ] twenty men
could stand in it at once."

" I suppose it was very old, was it not. Uncle
Philip ?"

" Nobody knew how old it really was, as

32 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

you may well suppose when 1 tell you that it-
was standing about eighty years since, and
that it was three hundred years before that,
when the room was used as an alehouse.
Oaks, you know, are very slow growing trees,
and very few of them get their full growth in
less than a hundred years, and then they
will stand a long time before they begin to
rot. In Torwood, in Scotland, there was very
lately another huge oak, or rather the remnant
of one, for there was hardly enough of it
left to show where it had stood ; it is supposed
to have been about twelve feet thick when it
was full grown, but nobody knows any thing
certain as to its size or its age. You have
heard of Sir William Wallace, have you not ?"
" Oh yes ; we read of him in the ' Tales of a
Grandfather :' he was a brave Scotchman,
and fought for liberty and his country, like our
Washington."

" And how long is it since he lived ?"
"About five hundred years. Uncle Philip."
" Well, it is said, and the story has been
told and believed for a great many years, that
Wallace and his principal officers used to
sleep in the hollow trunk of the oak I have
just told you of, and it has been called the

TREES OF AMERICA. 33

Wallace Oak for a very long time ; so long
that nobody knows when it was not called by
that name : so you see that must have been
a very old tree. You have heard of the royal
oak, I suppose, in which Charles the Second,
one of^the kings of England, hid himself from
his enemies, and which is still standins: at
Boscobel in Staffordshire ; it is not as large
as the other two I have mentioned, but a
great many curious people go to look at it, on
account of its age, and the circumstance of a
king having to hide in it to save his life ; when
you are older you may read in one of the vol-
umes of the * Family Library,' about Charles,
and his father, — whose head was cut off."

"But, Uncle Philip, are there no famous
oaks in this country ?"

" None that I know of, boys ; I have not
seen or heard of arfy that are remarkable
either for size or age ; our peopla are more
apt to think of the use they can make of a
good tree than of keeping it as an object of
curiosity, and there are not many oaks left
standing after they have grown large enough
for timber or firewood ; besides, as I have
already told you, trees grow so very large
only where there are not a great many of them,

34 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

and their roots have plenty of room to spiead,
as in England, where forests are scarce, and
the trees stand a great way apart ; in our
forests they grow close together, and therefore
we do not often see such huge fellows."

" Is there no way of telling how old an oak
IS, Uncle Philip ?"

" Not till it is cut down ; then if you look
at the end, you will find a number of circles,
one within the other, from the bark to the
centre ; each of these circles counts for a year,
and oaks have been felled in which three and
even four hundred of these rings have been
counted."

" What makes the circles. Uncle Philip ? do
you know?"

" I can tell you what men who have studied
the nature of trees say about it : they tell us
that the sap-vessels, which lie just under the
bark, are soft and spongy in the summer, and
harden and get to be firm wood in the winter :
when spring comes again, fresh sap rises in
another circle of vessels, pushing the bark
outwards ; and this in turn hardens again in
the winter, and so it goes on year after year,
forming new circles until the tree dies. And
now, boys, I believe I have told you enough

TREES OF AMERICA. 35

about oak-trees, and it is time for you to go
home to your suppers, for the crows are flying
away to the woods, and the sun is almost
down."

" Well, indeed, Uncle Philip, you have told
us a great deal that we did not know ; who
would have thought that a tree was so useful
and good for so many things 1"

" Every thing in the world is useful, boys ;
and it is our business to find out what every
thing in the world is good for. People are
making discoveries every day, and I think it
quite likely that when you are as old as I am,
you will laiow a great deal more about an
oak than I or cm y other man can tell you
now. Perhaps some of you may find out
something new and exceedingly useful ; but
to do this, you must learn what other men have
discovered, while you are young, and never
pass any thing by as not w^orth examining,
however humble or useless it may appear.
The bark of an oak seems to be good for no-
thing ; but you see that without it your shoes
would not last half so long, or keep out the
water as well as they do ; the branch of an
oak you would pass by as worthless ; yet from
it is made one of the ingredients of gunpow-

36 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

der, one of the most powerful su)>stances in
the world. Remember this, boys, and try to
learn all the uses and properties of all sorts
of things, and who knows but that you may
make yourselves famous, or, which is better
5till, useful, one of these days by some very im-
portant discovery. Good night, boys."
" Good night, Uncle Philip."

Tl).j lilMck Wi.liiut.

tREES OF AMERICA 39

CONVERSATION II.

Uncle Philip and the Children talk about
Nuts and Hickories.

" How do you do, boys ? Would you like
to walk into the woods with me to-day, and
talk of the trees for a while ?"

"YeSj if you please, Urlcle Philip. But
before we go, there is one thing we want to
ask you about : there is another use for oak-
trees, and all other trees, that you did not say
any thing about ; is there not, Uncle Philip ?
For the dear little birds to make their nests

in.'?

" Why, certainly, boys, the birds do make
their houses among the branches of trees ; I
thousfht it not worth while to mention that
to you, partly because I supposed that you
knew it, and partly because I intended only to
tell you what trees were good for, to men : but
I am glad you have mentioned it now, since

40 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

it shows that you have been thinking of what
we were talking about, and that what I told
you has not ' gone in at one ear and out at
the other,' as the saying is. And so, as you
have been good boys, we will take for our
subject to-day a kind of tree that you like
better than oaks, I am sure, for the sake of the
nuts ; you are all very fond of butternuts, are
you not ?"

" Yes, when they are nice and dry in the
winter ; they are not good for much till they
have got to be quite dry.'*

" We]], and you like hickories, too, do you
not, and shelbarks ?"

" Oh yes ; hickories are the best, after all ;
I never get tired of them."

" Then we will talk about walnuts to-day ;
so come along, boys, for the wood. And
now, as we go, I will tell you a thing in
which trees are useful to man : all trees, but
large ones particularly. You know how im-
portant it is for trees and all other things that
grow in the ground to have rain."

" Oh yes. Uncle Philip ; sister's flowers were
almost all dead last month for want of a wet-
ting : and father had to water his young salad?

TREES OF AMERICA. '41

and cabbages every night; he was afraid
they would die, too."

"But you do not know that it is partly
owing to the trees, that we get rain at all."

" To the trees, Uncle Philip ! why, how can
that be ? rain comes from the clouds, and not
from the trees."

" Very true ; but what are the clouds ?"

" Why, they are up over our heads, Uncle
Philip."

" Oh yes, I know lohere they are very weK ;
but I want you to tell me what they are, if you
can. But I suspect that you have not learned
that yet."

" No, Uncle Philip ; I believe I do not know
lohat the clouds are."

" Well, then, I will tell you : you know that
water when it is heated becomes vapour ;
you have seen the vapour rising from the
spout of the tea-kettle ; now the water all over
thr world is constantly giving off vapour just
di^ vhe water does in the kettle, and this
vapour is in fact nothing but water, made
very thin and light by the heat, and it always
becomes water agaiu when a great deal of it
gets together, and there is no heat to prevent
it ; when a great deal of the vapour does get

D

42 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

together, floating about in the air, we call it a
cloud : and wlien the clouds come near enough
to the earth, they become water again, and
come down in rain."

" But what good can the trees do, Uncle
Philip r

" Do not be in a hurry, boys ; I was just
going to tell you. The leaves have the power
of attracting or drawing the vapour as it is
sailing about over the tops of the trees : there
is always more rain in those parts of the coun-
try where there are mountains, and plenty of
trees, than in places where trees are scarce ;
and so you see that if the trees are obliged
to the rain for making them grow, they are
useful also in causing the very rain that is
so useful to them."

" Well, Uncle Philip, that seems very curi-
ous, and I should like to know more about
clouds and rain."

"You are too young yet to understand
much about it ; and besides, it is always the
best way to do one thing at a time ; so we
will go on with our walnuts, boys, if you
please, for the present ; and in good time here
we are close by a fine clump of your favouritfe
butternuts."

TREES OF AMERICA. 43

" Uncle Philip, I remember that when you
Oegan to tell us about the hickories and the but-
ternuts, you said that your talk to-day would
be about walnuts ; are walnuts and butternuts
the same ?"

" They are all of the same species : I know
that when you say walnuts, you mean only
the large black walnuts, that people make
pickles of before they get ripe ; but walnut
is the general name of a species of tree of
which the black walnuts and butternuts, and
all the diiferent sorts of hickory, are only
varieties."

" Uncle Philip, I have heard people say that
hickory-nuts only grow in this country ; is
that true ?"

" No, not exactly ; they will grow in Eu-
rope, but none have ever been found there
growing naturally ; they have all been raised
from nuts taken from this side of the At-
lantic."

"It seems to me, Uncle Philip, that God
has been very good to this country ; there are
a great many very good things here that are
not to be found anywhere else."

" God has been very good to us all, and
given us a great many blessings, if wn did

44 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

but know how to enjoy them properly. It is
true that we have some things in America
that other people have not ; and the people
of other countries have some things that we
have not : but then it is very easy to carry the
productions of different lands from one to an-
other ; and so we can have, not only what
grows here, but every thing good that is found
anywhere else."

" And are there no butternuts either in Eu-
rope, or anywhere but in our country ?"

" No ; there is but one kind of walnut thai
grows anywhere else, and that is the common
European walnut, or, as we call it, the Eng-
lish walnut ; some call it Madeira-nut. You
have eaten some of them, I dare say."

" Oh yes. Uncle Philip ; the shell is a great
deal thinner and softer than the shell of our
black walnut ; I can crack it with just my
fingers. And does not that walnut grow in
America ?"

" Yes, it will grow : but it must be planted ;
and, indeed, it is not a native j^roduction of
Europe ; it was brought, in the first place,
from Asia, a very long time ago. There are
very few of the trees in this country as yet."

" Is it better for any thing than our black
walnut ? — better than the hickory ?"

TREES OF AMERICA. 46

" Yes, for some things it is better ; and I
dare say it will be cultivated very extensively
by-and-by. It is a very beautiful tree, in the
first place ; and so are all the walnuts. The
nut is decidedly better for eating than that of
the black walnut, and it makes a much finer
oil ; but the wood is neither so good nor so
handsome."

"Oil, Uncle Philip ! Do they make oil out
of walnuts ?"

" Yes ; and it is chiefly for the sake of the
oil that the tree is so much thought of in
France, where it is most plentiful."

"How do they get the oil, Uncle Philip?
and what is it good for ?"

" To get the oil, they take out the kernels
carefully from the shells, and grind them in
a mill like a cider-mill; then they put the
paste into bags of strong linen, and press
them in a very strong press, and the oil is
squeezed out. It is very good to eat, and the
people of that country use a great deal of oil
with their food ; much more than we do, for
we use it only in dressing salad and lobsters,
and such things, but they eat it with all kinds
of meat, and even with bread, as we do
butter : but it is for another purpose that the

46 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

nut oil is most used ; for the preparation of
fine paints and colours, and of the ink used
by engravers ; it is the best oil in the world
for these purposes."

"Well, I did not know walnuts were good
for any thing but to eat ; it is almost a pity to
waste them in that way, since they can be
made so much more useful. Is it good for
any thing else, Uncle Philip ?"

"Yes, they make a very good medicine
from the unripe nuts ; and the husk, when
it is boiled, gives a good brown for dying
woollen cloths."

" Uncle Philip, why is the black walnut
called so ? The bark is not blacker than a
great many other trees, and the leaves are
quite green."

" The name comes from the wood ; when
the tree is fresh cut, the heart is of a violet
colour, but after it has been exposed to the air
for some time it turns very black."

" You said that the wood is better than the
English walnut ; what do they do with it?"

" Why a great many things, boys, just as they
do with the wood of the oak. It keeps sound a
long time ; it is hard, and strong, and tough, and
is very unapt to split or warp ; moreover it

TREES OF AMERICA. 47

takes a fine polish, and is very handsome
when it is made up ; and for all these good
qualities it is a favourite wood with the cabi-
net-makers. Then, it is seldom injured by
sea-worms, which, you know, do a great deal
of mischief to the bottoms of vessels ; and
therefore it is a great deal used in ship-building.
In some parts of the country they make tim-
ber for houses out of the black walnut ; and
shingles, and the stocks of muskets are made
of it ; and I have heard that there is no sort
of wood that bears the shock and strain of
the firing as well as this. In Virginia they
make posts of it, in preference to any other,
because it will last a very long time in the
ground without rotting; from twenty to
twenty-five years, which is much longer than
any other wood, except the locust, and the
cedar, and the cypress ; it is very good, too,
for the naves of wheels, and in Philadelphia,
coffins are made of it almost entirely."

"Is not the husk good for something
Uncle Philip ? — for dying, ox something like
that ? I know that it stains the hands very
much ; I have had my fingers so black with
it that I could not wash it away, and it lasted
several days."

48 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

" Yes, the colour it yields is exceedingly
strong, and the country people use it for dying
their woollen stuffs ; but regular diers do not
think much of it, because there are other
things that answer their purpose better. I
have only to tell you now that the black wal
nut is found in all parts of the United States,
but is most plentiful in the Middle and West-
ern : it loves a good soil, — neither sandy nor
swampy, and cannot endure a very cold cli-
mate. And now, boys, we will look at those
butternuts you have been picking up while I
was talking."

" They are not ripe yet. Uncle Philip."

" No, but they will be very soon ; they
ripen about the middle of September, a fort-
night earlier than the other kinds of walnut.
I suppose you know what the nut is good
for."

" Oh yes, Uncle Philip ; good to make pickles,

and very good to eat. They seem to be very
plenty this summer. Last year we had
scarcely any."

"Yes, they are very irregular in their
growth, as to quantity : some years one man
can gather several bushels in a day ; and at
other times there is hardly a nut to be seen."

TREES OF AMERICA. 49

" Is the wood good for any thing. Uncle
Philip ? I dare say it is, though ; for every
part of a tree seems to have some use or
other."

" It has one good quaUty of the black wal-
nut ; the worms do not destroy it. It lasts a
long time, too ; and therefore the farmers like
it to make their fences of : but it is not strong
enough for house-timber, or any other pur-
pose where strength is required. It is very
good for making wooden shovels, and bowls,
and dishes, not being apt to split ; and for the
same reason coach-makers like it for the pan-
els of carriages."

"Uncle Philip, what do the doctors make
of butternut-bark ? They use it for something,
I know, for one of the doctors in New- York
gets a great deal of it here every spring."

" They make a very good medicine of it
by boiling it in water, and then mixing the
decoction with honey. Do you know what
a decoction is ?"

" Not exactly, I believe : I have heard father
speak of decoctions and infusions, but I do
not know what the difference is."

" A decoction is when any thing is boiled
in water for the sake of some property which

E

50 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

is ccmmunicated to the water in the operation ;
an infusion is when any thing is steeped or
soaked in water, or any other hquid, for the
same purpose."

"Oh, then, Uncle Phihp, when sister makes
tea. that is an infusion, is it not ?"

" Yes ; and soup a decoction : and now
then you know what a decoction of butternut-
bark is. I have heard that the bark itself,
soaked in warm water, and applied to the face
and the neck, is good for the toothache, but I
never tried it. But there is another good
thing got from the butternut, boys, that I sus-
pect you do not know, although you have
lived in the midst of them all your lives."

" And what is that, Uncle Philip V

" Sugar."

" Sugar ! — Maple sugar ?"

" No, butternut sugar ; not as good as ma-
ple sugar, but still better than none. And in
some parts of the country very far from the
sea, where the people are poor, and have no
money to buy West India sugar with, and
maples are not plenty, they are very glad to
get such as they can make from the butternut.
It is made in the same way, by boiling the sap,
which is very sweet."

TREES OF AMERICA. 5l

" May we cut a hole in the bark of one
of these trees, Uncle Phihp, and taste the
sap r

" No, boys ; and for two reasons : in the
first place, the trees are not yours or mine,
and you have no more right to injure another
man's tree, than to take one of his sheep ; and
the other reason is, because it is not the right
time of year. The Spring is the season for
drawing the sap, and you would not be able
to get any now, if you were to bore ever so
deep."

" Well, that is new, Uncle Philip : I thought
sugar was got from no tree but the maple."

" Sugar may be made from the sap of al-
most all trees ; but it is only of the maple and
butternut that the sugar is either good enough
or in sufficient quantity to pay for the trouble
of making it."

" Uncle Philip, what is the reason that but-
ternuts are so much more plenty than black
walnuts ? There are only about twenty black
walnut-trees in this wood, and the butternuts
are scattered all over it."

" I suppose the reason is that the butternut
is a more hardy tree, and bears the cold
better ; it grows, too, in very poor soils ; the

52 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

largest I ever saw are in New^Jersey, on the
high banks of the Hudson, nearly opposite
New- York, where the scJil is very poor, and
cold, and stony. Some of them are four or
five feet thick, and fifty feet high. They
grow very well, too, in Vermont and New-
Hampshire, where the black walnut does not
thrive at all. In fact, the butternuts seem to
flourish all over the United States except at
the south ; the climate is too warm for them
there, and there you see another instance of
the wisdom with which God directs every
thing. The butternut is very oily, and, as
you said a little while ago, it is not good until
a long time after it gets ripe ; but, being so
oily, it would soon become rancid in a hot
climate, and so there is no use in its growing
there. And now, boys, for the hickories."

" Ah, we are always glad to meet them.
Uncle Philip ; they are old friends."

" And yet, I dare say, you cannot tell m^
now many there are of them."

" Oh yes, but we can though ; there is the
kisky thomas nut, and the pignut, and the
shelbark, and the plain hickory ; four sorts^
Uncle Philip."

"Yes, and four more, boys. There are

TREES OF AMERICA. 53

whree bitter kinds, besides the pignut, and
another that you have not mentioned at all ;
the pecan-nut."

" The pecan, Uncle Philip ! what, that long
nut, as big round as a finger, with pointed
ends, and a thin smooth shell ? Is that one
of the hickories ?"

" It is one of the walnuts, and the proper
name of it is the pecan-nut hickory."

" Why, Uncle Philip, I thought those pecan-
nuts were brought from the West Indies."

" Yes, I know that many people think so ,
but instead of that, they are taken to the
West Indies from New-Orleans. You must
know that it is not common in the Eastern
or Atlantic States ; but it is amazingly plenty
at the West, all along the Mississippi as far
north as Louisville."

" Did you ever see one of the trees. Uncle
Philip ?"

" Oh yes, a great many ; but there are
none about here, that I know of : it is a very
beautiful tree, sixty or seventy feet high, and
very straight, like the hickories we have ;
there is one objection though, to its cultiva-
tion, and that is its slow growth : there are trees
in France that have been planted more than

64 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

thirty years, and have as yet yielded no nius.
The wood is heavy and tough, but not as good
as that of our common hickory, and therefore
it is not much used. But before I go any
further, boys, I must tell you the right names
of all the different kinds of hickories. Tell
me again the names of the four kinds you
know of."

" The kisky thomas, the shelbark, the pig-
nut, and the hickory."

" Well, now, tell me what sort of a nut is
the kisky thomas."

" Oh, it is the nicest and sweetest kind, Uncle
Philip ; not very large, flat at the sides, and
the shell is thicker than the pignut, but thin
ner than the shelbark."

" Show me one of the trees, and tell me if
you discover any thing remarkable in the
bark."

" Oh yes. Uncle Philip, it is very rough,
and seems to be cut up into long narrow slips,
that bend outward at the ends, and stick to
the tree only in the middle."

" What sort of a husk has it ?"

" Look, Uncle Philip, here is one of them ;
it is not ripe yet, you see. "

" Well, now, boys, you observe that the nut

TREES OF AMERICA. 55

in its husk is shaped something like a peach,
being quite round, and having four deep cuts,
or grooves, reaching all the way down to the
stem ; and when the nut is ripe, the husk
opens at these grooves, and splits mto four
quarters."

" Yes, Uncle Philip, we know that ; and
the nut comes out of itself; but none of the
other kinds come quite out of the husk,"

" Well, this nut, kisky thomas, as you call
it, is really a shelbark ; that is the proper
name of it : and the large nut that you call
the shelbark is so called, to distinguish it from
this, the thick shelbark. Now find a hickory
for me, — what you call a plain hickory."

" There is one. Uncle Philip ; you see it is
a great deal larger than the kisky thomas. "

" And is there no other difference ?"

'' Oh yes ; the shell is a great deal thicker,
and the meat is very hard to get out."

" Well, this is properly called the mocker-
nut ; some people give it the name of the
hard walnut, on account of the hardness and
thickness of the shell. And now see if you
can find a pignut."

" Tha^t large tree with a smooth bark is a

56 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

pignut, Uncle Philip ; there are plenty of nuts
lying about."

" Well, you see that the nuts are of different
shapes, some quite round, some oval, and
some wider than they are long ; you see, too,
that the husk is thin, and of a beautiful green,
and has four splits extending only half-way
down to the stem. The nut is small and
quite smooth, and the shell, as I dare say you
know, is exceedingly hard."

'' Yes, indeed, Uncle Philip, it is ; so hard
that it is not worth cracking ; the meat is not
good for much, — it is too bitter."

"The squirrels though, with their sharp little
teeth, soon make a hole in it ; and the hogs
devour them at a great rate. Now you call
all the bitter nuts pignuts ; but in fact there
are four different kinds of them ; and this,
which is the true pignut, is the least bitter
of all. The other kinds are the bitternut,
the water-bitternut, and the nutmeg."

" The nutmeg. Uncle Philip ! why is it
called so ?"

" On account of its shape and size, which
much resemble those of a nutmeg : I suspect,
however, that von never saw any of them, for

TREES OF AMERICA. 57

they are not common, and I never met with
any of them except in South CaroUna."

" Uncle PhiUp, what are these bitter kinds
good for ?"

" Why, boys, I can hardly tell you. I be-
lieve that even the pigs will not eat the nut-
meg, or either of the bitternuts so long as
they can get any thing else. In some parts
of Pennsylvania they make oil from the bit-
ternuts ; but it is not good to eat, and they can
use it for lamps only. But the wood of all
the hickories is very useful ; not for building
though, because it is too heavy, and is very
liable to be worm-eaten : but for many other
purposes there is no wood so excellent. Its
toughness makes it exceedingly proper for
axletrees, axe-handles, and large screws, such
as they have in cider-mills : it is good, too,
for the cogs or teeth of mill-wheels, for whip-
handles, flails, musket-stocks, and ox-bows. In
the country the farmers make runners for their
large sleighs, or sleds, of hickory : it makes capi-
tal hand-spikes, too, and you know how proper
it is for making bows ; the Indians make all their
bows of hickory, and before the white people
came among them, they had nothing better than
bows and arrows with which to kill the wild

58 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

beasts of the forests, and each other ; but now
they are very generally supplied with guns,
and bows and arrows have gone out of fashion.
But of all the uses of hickory wood, there is
none more general or important than hoop-
making : it is very pliant, you know ; that is,
it bends very well, without breaking : and now
only consider what vast quantities of flour,
beef, whiskey, sugar, pork, apples, cider, mo-
lasses, and many other things are taken from
or brought to the United States in barrels,
and you may imagine what amazing num-
bers of hickory trees must be cut up into hoops
every year, and what sums of money are paid
for the poles ; and it is a very sad thing to
reflect that they are becoming scarcer and
scarcer."

"But, Uncle Philip, there is another great
use of hickory, that you have not mentioned."

" And what is that, my boy ?"

" For burning ; I have heard mother say
that hickory makes the best fire of any wood
in the world."

" It does, indeed ; the heat it gives out
is very strong, and the coals last a very
long time. A hickory log completely ignited,
and well covered with ashes, will keep twenty

TREES OF AMERICA. 59

four hours, and even longer. There is a
difference though, even in this respect, between
the different kinds ; the mockernut makes the
best, and the bitternut the worst fire. And
now, boys, I beheve I have told you all that
it is worth your while to know about the
walnuts just at present ; when you come to
see me again, we will talk of the maples.
You had better go home now : I shall stay in
the woods a little while longer, and treat my
self with a long walk this fine evening."

" Uncle Philip, sisters told me to ask you
if they might not come and hear you talk about
the trees, as they did about the proofs for the
New Testament ; I have been trying to tell
them as much as I could recollect about the
oaks, and they said they should like to learn
the uses of all the trees, too, if you would
be kind enough to let them come with me."

" Certainly, my dear boy, they shall be
very welcome ; and they can bring their
work, if they like, and do a great deal of sew-
ing, while I am talking. It is true that
a knowledge of trees and their uses is not
likely to prove so important to females as to
men ; but for many reasons it is desirable
that they should know, at least, something

60 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

about them. And for this great reason,
among the rest, that the study, Hke that of all
other natural objects, tends to enlarge the
mind, and to carry the thoughts up to the
great and beneficent Being from whom we re-
ceive all our blessings ; the mighty trees that
lift their tops towards the clouds, with their
majesty of form, the beauty of their foliage,
and their infinite variety of properties, are all
the works of His hand, and tell of his good-
ness and his power. Let your sisters know
then, that Uncle Philip will be heartily glad
to see them ; and the oftener they come, the
more he will be pleased. And now, boys,
good night. Come to me again whenever
you have time, and would rather sit still than
run about playing. "

" That we will. Uncle Philip. Who would
have thought that so much was to be learned
about trees !"

The Sugar Maple.

CONVERSATION III.

Uncle Philip tells the Boys and Girls about
Maple-treeSj and how to tnake Maple'
sugar.

" Good day, Uncle Philip ; we have come
to put you in mind of your promise, to tell us
about the maples ; the beautiful maples that
give us such nice sugar and sirup to eat
with our buckwheat cakes."

" And Uncle Philip is very glad to see you,
my children ; he is always pleased to talk
with good little boys and girls, and to tell
them any thing that he knows. You spoke
of the maple just now, my dears, as though
there was but one kind; you must know
that there are no less than fourteen : but only
seven of them are found in this country ; the
others are peculiar to Europe, and therefore
I shall not say much about them."

" We know three of the kinds, Uncle Philip ;

64 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

the sugar maple, the curled maple, and tht
birds'-eye maple.''

" But you are mistaken, my dears ; the
curled maple and the birds'-eye are not dis
tinct kinds ; they are only accidental varieties
But I will tell you the seven different kinds
and explain to you what the difference is.

" The first is the white maple, which is
very plentiful in the Western States, and par
ticularly on the banks of the Ohio : the leaves
are very beautiful, — bright green on the
upper side, and of a brilliant white on the
under : and this charming variety adds won-
derfully to the loveliness of the forests in that
fertile region. It is the largest of all the ma-
ples, being often seen four or five feet thick,
and the branches spread out so widely that a
single tree covers a very large space. The
wood is silvery white, but it is the softest and
lightest of all, and from its want of strength
is not very much used. It is made into
wooden bowls, and the charcoal that is made
from it is very much liked by hatters, and va-
rious other workmen who desire a steady,
permanent heat."

" And do they not make sugar from this
v^ind. Uncle Philip ?"

TREES OF AMERICA. 65

" Yes ; sugar may be obtained from all the
maples ; and the sugar of this kind is very-
white, and has a more pleasant taste than that
of the sugar maple."

" Well, then, Uncle Philip, why do not they
call it the sugar maple ? I should think they
would give that name to the tree that gives
the best sugar."

" The reason is, that the white maple does
not give as much sap as the sugar maple, and
the same quantity of sap only gives half as
much sugar ; and this is the case with the
other kinds, too."

" Uncle Philip, there is a maple-tree down
by the river that has very pretty red blos-
soms ; is that a white maple ?"

" No, that is another kind, and takes its
name from the blossoms ; it is called the red-
flowering maple : it grows very abundantly
all over the United States, and particularly in
the Middle and Southern : you are almost
sure to find it wherever there is a brook or a
swamp. It has a very beautiful appearance
in the spring, when it is covered with flowers \
and the wood is put to several uses."

" Oh, I am glad to hear that, Uncle Philip ,
I do not like the trees that are good for

66 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

nothing. And what do they do with the red
maple wood ?"

" It is mostly employed in cabinet-making ;
it is pretty hard, has a fine grain, and takes a
high polish : you know that a great deal of
this wood is used in the manufacture of chairs
and bedsteads."

"Ahj is this the curled maple, then, Uncle
Philip T

" Yes, it is the kind of maple that some-
times has the beautiful waving grain that is
so much admired ; for you must know that
it is not found in all the trees, and indeed the
proportion of waving-grained trees to the
others is very small ; not more than one in
a hundred."

"What makes it. Uncle Philip, do you
know ?"

" God makes it, my child, as well as every
thing else in the world ; but how the effect is
produced, and for what purpose, unless it is
merely to please our eyes, are secrets that
have not been found out as yet."

"The trees that make the curled maple
are more valuable, then, than the others, are
they not ?"

Yes, much more so ; and therefore, as

TREES OF AMERICA. 67

you may suppose, the curled wood is only
used in making furniture, and ornamental
work, such as panels for rooms, and the
stocks of fowling-pieces, and picture-frames,
and the like. The plain wood is very good
for spinning-wheels, and all kinds of ma-
chinery that does not require much strength,
and saddle-trees, and wooden shovels and
bowls, and all such light articles. Before
mahogany came into fashion, this wood was
very much used for making bureaus, and
tables, and all kinds of furniture ; and very
handsome they Avere, too. But it does not
last as long as mahogany."

".Is the bark good for any thing. Uncle
Philip ?"

" Yes, the country people make a very dark
blue die of it ; almost black."

" The wood is not good for burning I be-
lieve."

" No, very bad ; it burns away too fast, and
does not make good coals : and it is not es-
teemed for building or fencing stuiF either,
because it is very soon destroyed by worms."

" I suppose they make sugar from the sap ?"

" Yes ; but, like the white maple, the pro-
portion of sugar got from a certain quantity

68 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

of sap is only about half that of the sugar
maple."

" Oh, when will you tell us about that sugar
maple, Uncle Philip ?"

"Now, my dears. You must know that
the sugar maple is one of our own trees ; for
it grows neither in Europe nor in the South-
ern States."

" What, then, do they have no maple sugar
in Europe, Uncle Philip ?"

" Yes ; within a few years attempts have
been made in some of the European coun-
tries to get sugar from the sycamore, which
is a species of maple, and they have been
successful : but there is no kind that gives as
much sugar as this, from the same quantity
of sap."

" And what do they do for sugar in the
Southern States?"

" Oh, in the remote South, the sugar-cane
grows ; and besides, you know, if they want
it they can get plenty of maple sugar from us,
in exchange for their cotton and rice. They
can also get sugar from the West Indies."

" Oh, true. Uncle Philip ; I did not think
of that."

" You have seen sugar maple, I dare say,
my dears ; but if you have not, I will tell you

TREES OF AMERICA. 69

that it is a tall, slender, and beautiful tree,
commonly growing about fifty feet high, and a
foot or a foot and a half thick, and remarkable
for its very white bark. The leaves are bright
green on the upper side, and silvery white
below ; but they turn red with the first frost,
and thus add very much to the beauty and
brilliancy of our forests in autumn."

" I suppose the wood is not much used ;
people would rather save the trees, for the sake
of the sugar."

" But you are wrong, my dear : it is one of
the peculiarities of this tree, that the wood is
equally valuable with the sap, and the num-
ber of trees has been wonderfully reduced in
consequence ; but there are thousands and
tens of thousands left yet, and farmers are
getting to be more careful about them : so I
suspect there will never be any great scar-
city."

" And what is the wood good for, Uncle
Philip r

" For the same uses that the other maples
are good for : some of the trees have the wavy
and beautiful grain that gives it the name of
the curled maple ; and others have spots that
give the wood a still more lovely appearance ;

70 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

when it has these spots it is called birds'-eye
maple : it is used for bedsteads and orna-
mental furniture, but especially for portable
writing-desks, which are very elegant, and
bear a high price. It is very good fuel, too ;
and indeed most people like it as well, or
nearly as well, as hickory. But another use
is made of it, which I suspect you know
nothing about."

" And what may that be, Uncle Philip ? Is
it for tanning or dying ?"

" No, neither of these ; it is for making
potash."

" Oh, from the ashes ; why, what a capital
tree this is, Uncle Philip ; first we get sugar
from it ; then it gives us all sorts of beautiful
furniture; then it warms our houses, and
cooks our dinners ; and then, even after it is
burnt, we get something useful and good
from the ashes."

" Yes, and besides that, it makes excellent
charcoal ; blacksmiths will tell you they like
maple charcoal better than any other."

" Uncle Philip, what is potash good for ?"

"Oh, for a great many thmgs ; but its
greatest use is in making glass."

" Glass, Uncle Philip ! and can a maple-tree
be made into glass ?"

TREES OF AMERICA. 7 J

" YeSj with the help of a very strong heat,
and a certain portion of flint, or fine sand.
They put potash and flint-stones, broken up
small, into a melting-pot, and shut them up
in a furnace, with a large fire under the melt-
ing-pot ; the heat is made very intense by
constantly blowing ; and after a long time,
the flint and the potash are melted together
into a substance that looks something like
honey ; and this substance, when it gets hard,
is glass. But, after all, the great value of this
tree is in the sugar ; and as I suspect that
you have never seen the operation of making
it, I will describe it to you, as I have seen it
done at the west.

" The first thing to be considered is the
right season for tapping, and this is generally
at the end of February or the beginning of
March, when the sap begins to ascend. Then
a shed is built in some convenient spot near
the trees to be tapped, large enough to shelter
the boilers, and the persons v/ho tend them ;
and this is called a sugar-camp. The tools
that the sugar-boilers require are only an
auger three-quarters of an inch wide, to bore
the trees with, tubes eight or ten inches long,
made of elder, troughs to receive the sap from

72 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

the tubes, buckets for emptying the troughs
and carrying the sap to the camp, boilers
large enough to hold fifteen or eighteen gal-
lons, moulds to run the sugar into, and, lastly,
axes to cut firewood.

"Each tree is bored in two places^ at
about eighteen or twenty inches above the
ground, and the holes are four or five inches
apart : experienced boilers say that the holes
should be on the south side of the tree, and
not more than half an inch deep ; they say
that more sap is got by attending to these
directions.

" As fast as the sap runs into the troughs
through the tubes, it is poured into the boilers,
under which they keep up a brisk fire ; and
they take care to strain off the scum that
rises to the top. The boiling is kept up till
the sap has become thick, like sirup ; and
then it is strained through a blanket, and left
to cool.

•' After standing twelve hours, the sirup is
boiled again, till, on being rubbed between the
fino-er and thumb, it seems to be full of little
grains, and then it is ready to be poured into
the moulds. If it boils over, they throw a
small quantity of butter or lard into it, and

TREES OF AMERICA. 73

this makes it settle down again in a moment.
As the sirup cools in the moulds, it becomes
hard : the molasses is drained off, and there
is your sugar all ready."

" And very nice it is, too ; and so is the
molasses . but why is it not white, like the
loaf sugar, Uncle Philip ?"

" And so it would be, if it were refined like
that; loaf sugar, you know, is made from
common brown sugar, and by the same pro-
cess the maple sugar can be made as white as
snoAV."

" And how much can be got from a tree.
Uncle Philip ?"

" The quantity varies according to the soil^
and the size of the tree ; but, in general, about
two or three pounds may be taken as the
average : I have known four to be got from
a tree, and I have heard of trees yielding as
many as seven ; but these were extraordinary
instances. The sap continues running about
SIX weeks.'^

" And do they make any thing of the saj.
besides sugar ?"

" Yes ; by exposing it to the sun for three
or f jur days it becomes very good vinegar : and

74 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

the molasses is better than that which comes
from the West Indies."

" Uncle Philip, why do not people use more
maple sugar than they do ? It is a great
deal nicer than brown sugar."

"YeSj but everybody does not think so.
However, there is a great deal used, much
more than you have any idea of. I have
heard it said, that about ten millions of pounds
are consumed in the United States every
year. There is not a great deal of it made
near the large cities, because most of the lands
are cleared, and employed in the cultivation
of grain, and vegetables, and fruits ; but in the
Western States, where maples are plenty, and
the common brown sugar is scarce, the people
use great quantities of the maple sugar.

"There is another kind, called the black-
sugar maple, that grows very plentifully in
some parts of the Western States ; but the
only differences between it and the sugar
maple are in the colour of the leaves, which
are darker, and in the wood, which is coarser
grained, and not so brilliant and beautiful
when it is polished."

" Uncle Philip, are there any more kinds
of maple ?"

TREES OF AMERICA. 75

" Yes, three more, that grow in this country
the striped maple or *moose-wood, the box
elder or ash-leaved maple, and the mountain
maple."

" Why do they call striped maple moose-
wood, Uncle Philip?"

" The name was given by the first settlers
in Nova Scotia, and the most northern parts
of the United States, from observing that the
moose, which, you know, is 'a very large
animal of the deer kind, fed upon the young
twigs in the winter. It is not very common
in any part of the United States except Maine ;
but still, it is found all along the Alleghany
Mountains as far south as Georgia. The bark is
smooth and green, with black stripes ; and
this gives it the name of striped maple, by
which it is known in Pennsylvania and New-
Jersey."

" Oh, then I have seen some of the trees
Uncle Philip ; the leaves are rose-coloured."

" Yes, in the spring, when they first come
out ; but they soon change to green."

" And is it as valuable as the sugar maple ?"

•*0h no ; not by any means : the trees are too
small to allow of the wood being much used ;
and the greatest use that is made of the moose-

76 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

wood is for feeding cattle towards the close
of the winter ; the Ifeaves begin to sprout
much sooner than those of the other trees ;
and the young twigs and shoots, being tender
and full of sweet juice, are gladly devoured
by the famishing horses and cows.

" There is nothing curious, or much worth
knowing, about the other two kinds, the box
elder and mountain maple : the box elder
grows in great abundance west of the Alle-
ghany Mountains, but is very scarce in other
parts of the country. It gives no sugar, and
the wood rots so fast that it is of no service in
cabinet-making or building. They cultivate
it in Europe to adorn pleasure-grounds, on
account of its rapid growth, and its beautiful
foliage : the leaves are of a bright green.

" The mountain maple is rather a shrub
than a tree, for it never grows higher than
six or eight feet. As you may suppose from
the name, it grows only on mountains, and in
rough rocky places : the wood is too small to
be good for any thing. And now, my dears,
we have gone through our list of American
maples.'

" And what class will you take up next,
Uncle Philip ?"

TREES OF AMERICA. 77

" The next class will be the magnolias ; but
before we come to them,- there are three single
trees that I must tell you something about :
by single trees, I mean trees of whicn there
are no varieties, or at least none discovered
as yet. The first of these is the dogwood, or,
as they call it in Connecticut, boxwood."

" Oh, I know the dogwood, Uncle Philip ;
there is plenty of it in Jersey, and about here
too. It is covered in spring with large flat
white flowers, as big as a dollar, and the
berries are bright red."

"les, my dears, as you say, it is very
comui )n, not only about here, but all over
the f'nited States, except quite at the north :
whf/ever there are swamps, there you are
surr to find dogwood. Now you must know,
mv children, that there are in fact eight kinds
of iogwood, but there is only one of them
irirge enough to be called a tree, and that is
♦he one that you know so well."

" And after all. Uncle Philip, it is not very
«irge."

" No ; it is never found much over thirty
feet high, and the most common size is about
sixteen or eighteen feet. There are two
things about this tree that are singular ; one

78 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

is the bark, which is black, and almost always
split up into little squares ; the other curious
thing is in the branches, of which, by-the-
way, the number is much smaller than on
other trees : if you look at them you will find
them always arranged so as to make crosses."

" It is a very beautiful tree, Uncle Philip,
in spring, when the flowers are out. But I
never heard that it was good for any thing.
The berries are not good, I know, for I have
tried them."

" Yes, they are bitter enough ; but your
friends the robins are glad enough to get
them when the frost comes. As to the uses
of the tree, in the first place, it is very beauti-
ful, as you say ; the dark green leaves and
the abundance of white flowers are pleasant
to the eye, and when the seeds or berries are
ripe, I do not know any thing that is more
lovely in colour. As for the wood — "

" The wood, Uncle Philip ! what can the
wood of such little trees be good for ?"

" I was going to tell you, when you inter-
rupted me, which is a very bad practice.
Small as it is, the wood is very hard, and fine-
grained, and solid, and takes a good polish,
and it makes capital handles for hammers,

TREES OF AMERICA. 79

and chisels, and mallets, and small tools of
that kind ; and it serves very well, too, for
the cogs or teeth of mill-wheels, and for the
teeth of harrows, and the wood- work of horse's
collars. The inner bark, I have heard, makes
an excellent medicine for people that have the
ague and fever; very nearly as good as the
Peruvian bark that the doctors give for that
sickness ; and the outer bark makes ink quite
as good as the oak-apples."

" Well, I declare, Uncle Philip, the dogwood,
th ough it is little, is quite useful, and I shall
th ink more of it than I used to."

"Big things are not always the best, my
cl lildren, any more than big people."

" Uncle Philip, what is the Peruvian bark,
ll lat you mentioned just now ?"

" It is the bark of a tree that grows in Peru,
in South America ; one of the most precious
t]'ees in the world, because the bark cures the
^^ue and fever ; which no other medicine is
certain of doing."

" And does it not grow in this country ?"

" No ; it grows nowhere but in South
America ; but there is a tree that grows in
some parts of our Southern States that is very
much like it, both in appearance, and in its

80 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

medical properties. They call it the Georgia
bark. It is a small tree, seldom growing
higher than twenty or twenty-five feet, with
beautiful large flowers, white, with rose-
coloured stripes. The Avood is soft, and of no
use ; but the bark is exceedingly bitter, and
the people in Georgia take the decoction of it
in cases of fever and ague, just as we do the
Peruvian bark ; and I have been told that it
cures very frequently."

" And is this one of the three single trees
you said you would tell us about ?"

" Yes, this is one of the three ; and the last
is the cofFee-tree."

" Not the cofiee that we drink. Uncle Philip?
that does not grow on a tree, does it ?"

" It grows on a shrub, or very small tree ;
but the coffee-tree that I mean is a different
thing : it received its name from the first set-
tlers in Tennessee and Kentucky, where it is
most abundant. Of course, you know, when
they first went into those countries there were
no steamboats to bring them whatever they
wanted from New-Orleans, and it was not as
easy to carry all sorts of goods from the great
commercial cities into the West as it is now ;
and, besides, they were too poor to be able to

TREES OF AMERICA. 81

buy luxuries ; yet they were unwilling to go
without their coffee, and so they were very
glad when they found a tree growing in great
plenty, with large pods like the honey-locust,
and seeds in the pods that tasted something
like coffee ; and they called it the coffee-tree."

" And did they burn the seeds and make
coffee of them, Uncle Philip ?"

"Yes; but the country was settled very
fast, and the merchants soon began to come
from New-Orleans, and the settlers grew rich,
as the land was very good, and it was but a
short time before West India coffee was
plenty enough; and then they roasted no
more of the seeds of the coffee-tree ; but it
kept its name."

"And what is it good for now. Uncle
Philip ?"

" It has one use that is rather curious ; it
never grows but in very rich land, and the
settlers always know that the soil is good
where they find it ; so it saves them the
trouble of digging, and ploughing, and plant-
ing, to see whether the land is worth culti-
vating. Besides this, the wood is of an ex-
cellent quality; fine-grained and hard, and
good both for cabinet-making and building

G

82 CONVERSATIONS.

The flowers are very beautiful, too ; and as
the tree grows remarkably fast, it is proper
for planting about houses and pleasure-
grounds. The flowers are like stars, with
green and white rays, and a large yellow spot
in the centre. The leaf is like the leaf of the
locust.

" And now, my dears, I think we have done
for to-day. If you wish to learn any thing
more about trees, come to me on your next
holyday, and I will have some pretty pictures
to show you of very beautiful trees, and
flowers that grow in other parts of the United
States ; and I dare say there are several of
them that you have never seen. And so good
night, my dear children."

"Good night. Uncle Philip; we shall be
sure to come."

Cone, Flower, and Leaf of tlie Large Magnolia.

CONVERSATION IV.

Uncle Philij) tells the Boys and Girls about
Magnolias and Laurels^ and other heaiiti-
fiil Trees ; and shows them ivhy they ought
to he gratefid to God for such Trees, al-
though they are not useful, as tuell as for
Oaks and Maj)les.

We come now, my dears, to a useless but
very beautiful class, that has long been fa-
mous for the elegance of its flowers, and
the magnificence of its foliage. The mag-
nolia has been called the pride of the southern
forests, and if beauty alone could establish its
claim, there would be no tree to dispute with
it for the title ; but usefulness is more prized
than what merely pleases the eye, and the
oak, the pine, the maple, and various othei
trees, plain as they are in comparison, are
much more esteemed for their services than
the splendid magnolia with all its loveliness."

" Ah, that is like the story of the tiger and

86 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

the camel : a little boy went to see some
wild beastS; and he was delighted with th^
beautifully striped skin of the tiger, and won
dered why the keeper had such an ugly beast
as the camel in his collection, till his fathei
told him how cruel the beautiful tiger is, and
how useful the ugly camel."

" Very true, my dear ; and I hope you will
remember always to try to find out what
the use of a thing is, and not pass it by or
throw it away, merely because it is not as
beautiful as some other things. However,
there is no reason why you should not admire
the flowers and cones of the magnolia : see
here is a drawing of them." (See p. 84.)

" Oh, what a curious cone ! Uncle Philip,
what are those little balls hanging down from
the sides ?"

" Those are the seeds ; but before we come
to the flowers, let me tell you something about
the trees."

"I remember you called them a class.
Are there many different kinds of magnolia,
then ?"

" Yes ; thirteen, in all, have been discovered,
five of which belong to China, one to the
West Indies, and the other seven to this

TREES OF AMERICA. 87

country; these seven are very much alike,
except in size, and in the shape of the leaves ;
and are all equally useless, except to increase
the beauty of gardens and plantations : a de-
scription of one, therefore, with very slight
notices of the rest, will serve for the whole.
The names of the seven kinds are, the large
magnolia or big laurel, the small magnolia or
white bay, the cucumber-tree, the heart-leaved
cucumber-tree, the umbrella-tree, the long-
leaved cucumber-tree, and the large-leaved
umbrella-tree."

" I suppose they do not grow anywhere
about here. Uncle Philip ; I never heard
any of these names before, except the magno-
lia."

" The white bay and the umbrella-tree are
found in New- York and New- Jersey, but they
are not very common ; the others are seldom
found north of Virginia, and they all seem to
prefer the mild climate of Georgia, and the
Carolinas : in Florida, too, they are most
g-bundant, and grow to the largest size."

" I have read a story of an Indian chief,
Uncle Philip, who saved the life of a British
officer, and afterward sent him home to his
father ; and in that story there was something

88 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

about a magnolia ; it said, the lofty magnolia :
do they grow very large ?"

"Some of them do; the large magnolia
and the cucumber-tree are found sometimes
as high as eighty or ninety feet : the umbrella-
tree is the smallest, and is not often seen more
than thirty feet high : the others are about
forty or forty-five feet. But in the neigh-
bourhood of New- York and Philadelphia, the
white bay can hardly be called a tree, for its
usual height is not more than eight or ten feet ;
at the south, though, it grows to its full size.
The trunks of them all are straight and slen-
der, except that of the white bay ; and the
tops are of a regular and beautiful shape."

" What a pity it is that such beautiful trees
should be good for nothing : why can they
not make things of the wood, Uncle Philip ?"

" Because it is soft, and weak, and does not
last long : they make canoes sometimes of the
cucumber-trees, and the wood answers very
well for that purpose, being so light and
buoyant : but boats are a great deal better
than canoes, and the wood is not strong
enough to make boats of It is not even good
for burning ; it gives but little heat, and burns
away very fast.'

TREES OF AMERICA. 89

"And is the bark good for nothing, too?
I should like to find the beautiful magnolias
made use of for something."

" They may have very excellent uses, and
perhaps you may be happy enough to dis-
cover some of them when you grow older ;
all I mean to say is, that no valuable proper-
ties have been found in them as yet. I be-
lieve that the bark is not good for any thing,
but I have been told that in some parts of New-
Jersey the people steep the cones of the white
baj- in whiskey, and drink the infusion as a
preventive against fall fevers ; they call it bay
bitters. But I doubt whether it really an-
swers the purpose or not."

" Now, Uncle Philip, will you please to tell
me about the cones, and the little balls hang-
ing down from the side ?"

" As I told you before, the little balls are
the seeds: the cone is the fruit of the tree,
and consists of a great number of little cells ;
and when the cone is ripe these cells open
and let out the seeds, which hang for several
days by a white thread, ox filament : the seeds
are something like cherries, being stones
covered with a red pulp ; but they are not
good to eat. The cones of the large and

H

90 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

small magnolias, and of the cucumber and
heart-leaved cucumber-tree, are green: the
others are of a lovely rose colour. The seeds
are bright red."

"And how large are the cones, Uncle
Philip ?"

" Of different sizes ; the cone of the large
magnolia is about four inches long, while that
of the white bay is seldom more than an inch,
or an inch and a half."

" Uncle Philip, why are the cucumber-trees
and umbrella-trees called so ? what has giv^n
them their names ?"

" If you were to see the cones of the cu-
cumber-trees, you would know in a moment ;
they are shaped exactly like young cucum-
bers. The umbrella-trees have their name
from the great size of the leaves, and the
curious manner in which they grow. They
are often seen eighteen or twenty inches long,
and seven or eight wide ; and a number of
them are frequently found growing at the end
of a shoot or stalk, and all standing out dif-
ferent ways, like the spokes of a wheel, so
that they display a very large surface ; almost
as large as an umbrella. The leaves of the
iarofe-leaved umbrella-tree are still more enor-

TREES OF AxllERICA. 91

mous ; they have been seen thirty-five inches
long, and ten broad. All the magnoHas have
large leaves, but none of the other kinds have
such monsters as the umbrella-trees. They
are all ever-green, thick, smooth, and shining,
and of a darker colour on the upper side than
the under."

" And the flowers are very beautiful, too,
are they not, sir ?"

" Yes, exceedingly beautiful ; large, grace-
ful, and delicate, and of a very agreeable
smell. The flower of the large magnolia is
white, an'd seven or eight inches wide ; that
of the small magnolia is also white, and two
or three inches broad, with a yellow centre :
of the cucumber-tree, five or six inches wide,
and of a delicate bluish white : of the heart-
leaved cucumber, yellow, and four inches
wide : of the umbrella-tree, white, and seven
or eight inches broad : and of the large-leaved
umbrella, hugest of all, for they are nine
inches in diameter, purely white, with a pur-
ple spot on the inside of each petal or leaf,
near the bottom ; delicious in perfume, and
exceedingly beautiful. Fancy the shining
dark green leaves, the brilliant large white
flowers thickly scattered all over the tree, and

92 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

the rose-coloured cones, with the scarlet seeds
hanging Irom them, and you can scarcely
imagine any thing more lovely."

" And yet this beautiful tree is of no use ;
what a terrible pity it is, Uncle Philip."

" Not so, my dear child ; though the mag-
nolia is useless, its beauty pleases the eye, and
we have a right to suppose that this was the
purpose for Avhich it was created. God has
been so good to us as not merely to provide
for our wants, but also for our pleasures ; for
this. He has given perfume to the rose, bril-
liancy to the diamond, and loveliness to the
magnolia ; and though we can neither eat
the gem or the flower, nor make use of the
beautiful tree for any of the purposes to which
we apply the oak or the pine, they are not
the less gracious and estimable gifts, and they
call for our gratitude just as much as the
most useful productions of nature."

" Uncle Philip, are there any more trees
that have large handsome flowers ?"

" Oh yes, several ; there are the tulip-tree,
and the catalpa, and some of the bays and
laurels. There are the loblolly bay, and the
franklinia, that in some respects seem to be-
long to the class of magnolias ; but they have

TREES OF AMERICA. 93

not the cones, and the leaves are notched at
the edges, instead of being smooth: and so
they have been placed in a distinct class by
themselves."

^•And do they grow about here. Uncle
Philip r

" No, not unless they are planted ; but in
the Southern States they grow wild. The
loblolly bay is fifty or sixty feet high, and
from sixteen to twenty inches in thickness ;
the trunk is perfectly straight ; the wood is
rose-coloured, and very fine-grained, but it
lasts only a short time, and is therefore of
no use, not even for fuel. The bark, though,
is good for tanning, and, as the red oaks are
scarce in those parts of the country where
this tree is most common, the people use a
great deal of it in their tan-yards."

" Oh, I am so glad, Uncle Philip ; I am glad
to find one of the beautiful trees useful for
something. Is it as handsome as the other
magnolias ?"

" Very nearly : the leaves are ever-green,
smooth^ and shining on the upper side, and
whitish below : and the flowers are white and
very sweet-scented. The fruit is small, and
oval iR s/^ape.wJ^V?^^ i^lo five pey.ii_:wbidli.

> > >' I ) >

'?>::•

94 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

contain little black seeds. The franklinia is
very much like the loblolly bay, only a great
deal smaller ; it generally grows to about
thirty feet high, and the trunk is six or eight
inches thick. The flower is white, and very
sweet-smelling, and consists of five leaves,
with a yellow spot in the centre as large as a
shilling. The fruit is something like a hazel-
nut, only not so hard ; and it has five seams
at the top, that open when it is ripe, and let
out the seeds, which are very small. All
these trees are ever-greens. Do you know
what is meant by an ever-green ?"

" Oh yes. Uncle Philip ; a tree that has
green leaves in winter as well as summer :
the leaves do not fall oiF or change their
colour when the cold weather comes ; the
laurel is an ever-green, and so is the box that
grows in the gardens."

" Very true ; and now, as I have been
telling you about ever-greens, there are two
others that I will describe to you, although
they do not belong to the magnolias, and in
fact can hardly be called trees at all, for they
seldom grow more than ten or eleven feet
high.
••M.vlf^i^-tfe Ikure! tbit -i^ott m\3ntioned just

TREES OF AMERICA. 95

now, as one of the ever-greens ; you know
the colour and shape of the leaves, of course,
but I suppose you have never seen the
flowers ; they are of a delicate purple colour,
and curiously shaped. Some call it the ivy,
and some the calico-tree ; but the general
name is the mountain-laurel."

" And that is the best name, too. Uncle
Philip ; for you hardly ever see it except upon
hills and mountains."

" Very true : and in those parts of the
country where the lands are all low, it is not
to be seen at all. It is very abundant in New-
Jersey, more especially on the high grounds
about Weehawk, and all the way up the North
River, wherever the land is rocky and moun-
tainous, and the whole chain of the Alle-
ghany Mountains is covered with it ; but it
disappears in those parts of the Southern
States where the rivers enter the low coun-
try."

" It is a beautiful little tree. Uncle Philip,
even without the flowers ; but very trouble-
some to get through."

"Yes, the branches and trunks get so
twisted and locked together, that it is almost
unpossible to make way through them at all !

96 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

and, as you say, the bright green leaves with
which the branches are covered appear very
beautiful at a short distance ; but when the
flowers are all in full bloom, there is no shrub
more lovely. The leaves and berries are
poisonous, and you must be very careful
never to eat them."

" I suppose the wood is too small to be good
for any thing."

" No, it is not ; for you must know that in
North Carolina the laurels grow larger than
they do in this neighbourhood : the trunks
there are often three inches thick, and some-
times more ; and the wood is so good, that a
great deal of it is used for small boxes and
screws, and the handles of small tools, and
musical instruments, such as flutes and clario-
nets, and for carpenters' rulers, and scales.
It is very like boxwood."

"Uncle Philip, what is the other ever-green
you said you would tell us of? Is it as beau-
tiful as the laurel ?"

" Perhaps you would think it more beautiful
if you were to see it; and that you may do
very easily in the spring, for it is almost as
common as the laurel : in the swamps of
New-Jersey opposite New- York, on Long

TREES OF AMERICA. 97

Island, and, indeed, in almost every part of
the Middle States, it is very abundant ; that
is, wherever there are mountains, for it does
not love low grounds. It is also a species
of laurel, and the name of it is the dwarf-rose
bay. The flowers are much larger than those
of the mountain-laurel, and shaped something
like a star-fish : of a deep rose-colour, with
yellow dots on the inside ; sometimes they
are perfectly white, but not often. It grows
generally about ten feet high ; but trees are
occasionally seen measuring eighteen or
twenty, and four or five inches thick. I have
not a picture to show you, but it is so beauti-
ful, with its green leaves and red flowers, that
it is worth taking a walk into the woods in
spring, just to look at it. The wood is not
as good as the laurel, and no use is made of it
that I know of."

" Uncle Philip, is there no other laurel than
the two you have just told us of ? I have
heard that the sassafras is one of the same
kind of trees."

" So it is ; and there is another still, called
the red bay. The sassafras, as you know, I
suppose, is a fine tall tree, forty or fifty feet
high, and more than that even, in some parts

98 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

of the Southern States. — It is very common
all over the country, except in the mountain-
ous districts ; and it is as useful as it is com-
mon. The leaves are four or five inches long,
and of different shapes on the same tree ;
some you will find oval, with plain even
edges ; some divided into three parts by
deep notches in the edges ; and some with
only one notch. The flowers are greenish
yellow, small, and grow in little clusters.
The fruit or seed is a small oval berry of a
deep blue, contained in a bright red cup ; the
birds are very fond of them, and they soon
strip the trees. The bark of the young
branches is of a beautiful green, but that of
the trunk is gray and full of deep cracks.
The wood is not at all strong, and is of a
reddish colour ; but -it rots very slowly and
is not attacked by worms, and for that reason
makes very good posts and rails for fences ;
and it is said that bugs are never found in
bedsteads made of it. But it is as a medi-
cine that the sassafras is most prized ; you
know what a pleasant smell it has, and I
dare say you have tasted the bark ; oil is
made from the bark of the roots, and from
the flowers a tea is made which is thought

TREES OF AMERICA. 99

to be good for purifying the blood ; and in
Louisiana the leaves are boiled in soup to
thicken it, and give it a pleasant flavour,
In Virginia too, the people make beer from
the young shoots, which they like very much :
it is made in the same way as the spruce
beer.

"The red bay is the largest of all the
laurels ; it is only found in Virginia and the
States still farther south, where it grows
from sixty to eighty feet high. The flowers
are quite small and not beautiful, and the
fruit or seed is like that of the sassafras.
The wood is strong, fine grained and of a
lovely rose colour, and it takes a brilliant
polish. It was formerly very much used for
furniture, but mahogany is preferred now ; it
is mostly employed in ship-building, being
both strong and durable. There is another
species of laurel that is of more value th^
any of those I have mentioned, but it only
grows in the East Indies ; it is almost exactly
like the red bay in appearance, except that the
berries are purple ; and its worth is in the
gum that is got from the roots ; this gum is
the camphire that we buy from the druggists."

100 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

" And will not that laurel grow in this
country?"

" I should think it would, from its being so
much like the red bay ; and I dare say it will
be introduced and cultivated in Florida, and
the Carolinas and Georgia, by-and-by. Now,
my children, I believe we have done with the
mag-nolias and laurels."

"Uncle Philip, I saw a curious tree once at
Oyster Bay in Long Island, that had a very
beautiful large flower, and a cone somewhat
like the cones of the magnolias ; but they
called it a tulip-tree ; I believe there was only
that one anywhere about Oyster Bay, at least
so they told me."

" Oh, I know what you mean ; the flowers
are very large, with yellow and red leaves,
and a sort of spike in the middle. Some
people call it white wood, and many give it
the name of poplar ; but tulip-tree is the
most proper name, as the flower is something
like a tulip, and there is a different tree that
is always called poplar.

" The tulip-tree grows to a magnificent
size ; it is found in most parts of the Middle
States, and" still more abundantly at the west.

TREES OF AMERICA. 101

In New-York and Pennsylvania, it has been
seen seventy and eighty and even one hun-
dred feet high, and three or three and a half
thick ; but in Kentucky it grows sometimes
as high as one hundred and forty feet, with a
trunk six or seven feet thick, and as straight
as an arrow."

" Well, that is a very great size to be sure ;
now if it is only as useful as it is large and
handsome, that it is something worth talking
about. I suppose it must be the largest of all
trees."

" Oh no ; the button-wood or button-ball as
you call it, is still larger, but we will talk about
that by-and-by. The wood is yellow, and
fine grained, and it takes a very good polish ;
and besides this, it is strong enough for
almost any use that can be made of it. The
heart or perfect wood, when well seasoned
•asts a long time, and is never attacked by
worms, and for this reason it makes very ex-
cellent house timber, and for rafters and roof
pieces it is better than oak, being equally solid
and durable, and much lighter. In some parts
of the country, where pine wood is scarce,
boards for the outside of houses are made of the
tulip-tree, but it is not as good for this use as

i02 S;ONVERSATIONS On'tHE

\he pine ax I cedar, because it is apt to warp
and bend /hen exposed to the changes of
weather Zn Ohio and Kentucky, shingles
are made of it ; and great quantities of the
wood are used all over the country for the
panels of carriages. It is much employed
too in making chairs and bedsteads and
trunks. The Indians used to make their
canoes of the tulip-trees in preference to any
other, partly on account of their size, and
partly because the wood was so easy to work,
and lasted so long. In short it is excellent
for all kinds of use except ship-building and
such others as require solid and heavy timber ;
and it makes capital charcoal too."

" And is the bark good for tanning or any
thing, Uncle Philip 7 If it is, I shall think the
tulip-tree almost as useful as the oak."

" No, it is not used in tanning ; but an
infusion of it in brandy is thought to make a
good medicine, in some parts of the country ;
and it is given to horses in powder to cure
them of worms. Some physicians have given
it as their opinion that- the bark has the same
properties as the Peruvian ; but I believe
that it has never come into general use as a
medicine."

TREES OF AMERICA. 103

"Uncle Philip, where can I see a tuUp-
tree? I should like to look at the flowers
very much, and at the tree too ; I love large
trees."

" You may see the flowers in m^et during
the spring ; or if you will go into the woods
almost anywhere, you will be sure to find
some of the trees, for it is quite common all
over the United States, except at the East.
But you must not expect to find it as large
about here as it is near the great rivers of the
West.

" But if you admire the size of the tulip-
tree so much, what do you think of the
majestic sycamore, or button-ball, as most
people call it in this part of the country ; the
largest and loftiest tree that grows in the
United States. Very often it may be seen on
the banks of the Ohio and Mississippi with a
trunk seven feet thick, and sixty or seventy
high, perfectly free from branches, which
then tower up fifty, sixty, and even eighty
feet higher, making the whole tree from a
hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty
feet high."

" Uncle Philip, what is the reason that trees
always grow larger in the Western States

104 C01<JVERSATI0NS ON THE

than they do anywhere else ? All the large
trees you have mentioned except the mag-
nohas, seem to come to their greatest size on
the banks of the Ohio and Mississippi."

^^ The pflhcipal reason is the great fertility
of the soil in that part of the country ; greater
perhaps than in any other part of the world ;
the climate too is favourable ; and another
reason is, that until very lately, the country
was very thinly inhabited, and the trees were
left to grow as long as they could ; in the
more settled States trees are cut down as soon
as they are large enough to be made use of ;
but there they were suffered to stand till they
fell by their own decay."

" And do the sycamores grow a long time
then, Uncle Philip ?"

"Yes, they are a long-lived tree, although not
so much so as the oak. A few years ago there
was on a little island in the Ohio one which
was measured by General Washington when
he was a young man, and then it was forty
feet in circumference or thirteen feet thick, at
the height of five feet from the ground ;
General Washington was born in 1732, and
therefore, it must be fifty or sixty years since
he measured the tree, and when I saw it, ten

TREES OF AMERICA. 105

years ago, it was very little decayed, and no
larg-er than he found it. There was another
about thirty-five miles from Marietta m Ohio,
that was forty-seven feet in circumference ;
and I saw one about fifteen years ago, on the
banks of the Mohawk, not far from Utica, that
was famous all over the country ; it was
called the big button-ball, and it took eight
men, with their hands joined, and their arms
stretched out as far as they could be, to encir-
cle the trunk. A part of the hollow trunk of
this tree was exhibited at one of the museums
in New- York last summer."

" Oh, then I saw it. Uncle Philip ; it had a
carpet in it, and chairs, and a table, and it
made quite a nice little room."

" But even these, huge as they are, do not
equal a famous tree, something like a syca-
more, that grew in Asia, and is mentioned by
Pliny, one of the ancient writers. He says
that one of the Roman generals, with eighteen
of his attendants, found a retreat for the night
in the hollow trunk of this monstrous tree,
and that the inside of the cavity was seventy-
five feet in circumference. Can you tell me
why the sycamore is so often called button
ball r

106 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

" Oh yes, Uncle Philip ; from the numbei
of little balls that grow on it, and which are
shaped' very much like a bell-button."

" And do you know what those balls are,
and what they are good for ? I suppose not.
Well then you must know, they are the fruit
of the tree, and contain the seeds. You have
seen that they are about an inch in diameter,
and that in the course of the autumn they fall
from the tree, and break into a great number
of little tufts or feathers, which are scattered
about by the winds ; each of these little tufts
is a seed, and it is in this way that the trees
are planted and spread about over the coun-
try."

"Is the wood good for any thing, Uncle
Philip ? I suspect not, though, for I have
heard father say that it was a pity such a fine
large tree should be so little useful."

" The wood is handsome and polishes well,
but the cabinet-makers find fault with it, on
account of its being so liable to warp ; and
it decays very rapidly too when exposed to
the weather. It lasts a long time under
ground, however, and therefore I should
think it would be good for such timbers of
houses, as are used in cellars : but there are

TREES OF AMERICA. 107

SO many other woods that are more durable,
that very Httle use is made of the sycamore,
and it is chiefly cultivated for the beauty of its
appearance ; the foliage is very rich, and
abundant, and the leaves are not as much
devoured by caterpillars as those of most of
the ornamental trees, and for this reason it
is much esteemed in Europe, for parks and
gardens. The Indians make their largest
canoes of the trunks, and I have read of one
that was seen some years ago, on one of the
Western rivers, that was sixty-five feet long,
and carried nine thousand pounds weight of
cargo, made from a single tree.

" I have three or four trees yet to tell you
of that do not belong to classes, but stand
alone by themselves, and are besides of but
little use in commerce or manufactures : and
when we have done with these, we shall take
up those of greater utility. And, first, there is
the papaw."

" The papaw, Uncle Philip ! does that grow
in this country ? I have read of it in Robinson
Crusoe, and in some other books ; and I thought
it was found in the West Indies, and in South
America, and other places a long way off*."

" So it is, my dear ; but it grows in this

108 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

country too, in Kentucky and Tennessee, and
other parts of the Western States, and in
some parts of Virginia : but it is not very com-
mon, and grows only in the most fertile
soils. It is a very small tree, seldom growing
more than fifteen or twenty feet high. The
flowers are dark purple, and the fruit is yel-
lowish, about three inches long, and of an
irregular shape, somewhat like a sweet po-
tato. It is soft and insipid, and not very
good to eat : the children gather it in the
woods, but it is never brought to market.
The wood is entirely useless, and the inner
bark and the roots have a very strong dis-
agreeable smell. It is cultivated in Europe
solely on account of its flowers and leaves,
which give it a handsome appearance. The
seed is a stone not much unlike that of the
date.

" The next is the sweet gum, which is very
plentiful all over the country. You know itj
I dare say, by the fruit, which is a sort of
prickly ball, about an inch in diameter, anc
of a reddish brown colour."

" Oh yes, Uncle Philip ; I have seen thou-
sands of them at Hoboken ; the ground is
covered with them in the fall. But I did not

TREES OF AMERICA. 109

know what tree they came from before.
Why is it called sweet gum, Uncle Philip ?"

" If you had ever examined the tree in
warm weather, you would know without
asking- ; by cutting through the bark into the
Bap, you will find a sweet smelling liquor
90zing out, which hardens into a transparent
gum when exposed to the air, and the same
substance is found on the leaves."

" And is this gum good for any thing. Uncle
Philip ? Is it like the gum arable that I have
seen at the druggists ?"

" I dare say it has the same properties ; but
the quantity that can be got from a tree is so
very small that it is not worth the trouble of
collecting it. The wood is strong and tough,
and if properly seasoned, lasts longer than the
red oak, but it is not much used ; cabinet-
makers sometimes employ it, but they pre-
fer the black walnut, and the wild cherry.
In New- York, it is often made into coffins.
If you will examine one of the prickly balls
that grow on the tree, you will find that it is
formed of a great number of little cells, each
of which contains a small black seed, with a
sort of wing attached to it. At the close of

110 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

the summer, these cells open and let out the
seeds, which are scattered about by the wind,
and so the trees are spread all over the coun-
try. The leaves are very handsome, and
shaped somewhat like a star, with one of
its points wanting. The tree generally
grows thirty or forty feet high, and it is
found in great abundance in every part of
the United States.

" Another beautiful Southern tree is the
catalpa, that grows plentifully in the Caro-
iinas and Georgia : its height is about fifty
feet ; the bark is smooth, and of a silver gray
colour ; the leaves are very large, and shaped
like a heart ; and the flowers are showy and
handsome, white with yellow and violet
spots, and something like the sweet-pea, only
more beautiful. You have seen the pods, I
dare say, for there are several of the trees
about this neighbourhood, and in New- York
they are quite numerous."

" What, is that the catalpa, with long round
slender pods, like beans, hanging down from
the branches, more than a foot long ? They
are of a deep dusky red, and not so big as
your finger. Is that the catalpa ?"

TREES OF AMERICA. Ill '

*' I suppose it iSj my dear, from your descrip-
tion ; but I could tell better if you had
noticed the leaves."

" Uncle Philip, I have heard that the honey
made by bees that suck the flowers of the
catalpa is poisonous. Is that true, sir ?"

" Indeed, my dear, I do not know ; it is very
certain that honey does sometimes produce
unpleasant effects on those who eat it, but
whether this is owing to the flowers or not I
am not able to say, but I think it is very likely.
The wood of the catalpa is white, very light,
and of a fine texture, and when it is polished,
very brilliant and beautiful. When it is
perfectly seasoned it lasts a long time, and for
this reason it makes good posts for fences ;
but it is not much used, and the trees are
chiefly cultivated for the sake of their flowers
and foliage. In the Southern States, the ca-
talpa is a very great favourite."

" Uncle Philip, I want to ask you a ques-
tion, if you please."

" Well, my boy, what is it ? I will answer
it if I can."

" I want to know, then, why you have not
told us about any of the fruit trees. You
Slave described a great many that are

112 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

useful, and some that are beautiful : but you
have said nothing about cherries, or peaches,
or pearSj or apples : and yet they all grow
in the United States, do they not?"

" Very true, my dear boy ; but I only un-
dertook to describe to you such trees as grow
naturally, that is without being cultivated, or
planted by men. Now there are but few wild
fruit trees ta be found in this country ; all the
varieties of apples have been produced by
cultivation from one or two species ; and so
of the cherries and plums ; peaches, I believe,
are not natives of this country at all ; and
indeed the changes that have been produced
in all the fruit trees, by the skill and attention
of men, are so great, that it is almost impossi-
ble to say what the original stock is. Did
you ever see a crab apple ?"

" Yes, Uncle Philip ; it is a small tree, not
larger than a peach-tree, and the apples are
always green and very sour."

"Yes, but the flowers are beautiful, and have
a most delightful perfume. Well, that is the
only wild apple that grows in the United
States ; and all the other kinds, and there are
several hundreds, are but artificial varieties.
You have seen the flowers,. I dare say."

TREES OF AMERICA. 113

" Oh yeSj they are white and rose coloured,
and when the trees are in blossom you can
smell them a long way."

" And did you ever taste the leaves when
they were young ?"

" No, sir.''

" If you had, you would have found them
bitter, but not unpleasant ; some people make
tea of them, when they cannot get better.
The apples, you know, make the best cider."

" Yes, and capital sweetmeats too ; but they
take a great deal of sugar, they are so very
sour."

" There is another wild fruit tree, that I
suspect you have never seen, for it grows
principally among the Alleghany Mountains,
although it is sometimes found in swamps near
Philadelphia and New- York. Its common
name is the June berry; its height is from
twenty to thirty feet ; the leaves are small,
and when they are young they are covered
with a thick, silvery down, that gives them a
beautiful shining appearance ; but this disap-
pears as they grow older. The flowers are
small and white, and the fruit is reddish pur-
ple, very sweet, and not larger than a pea : it
looks somewhat like a very small cherry, but

1 1 4c CONVERSATIONS.

there is no stone in it ; and the substance is
more hke that of an apple."

" Ohj I should like to have some of those
trees, Uncle Philip ; the berries must be very
good to eat."

^' They are not near as good as a cherry,
and besides, you could never get more than
half a pound from each tree ; so you see they
would hardly be worth the trouble of gather-
ing. The wood is of no use except for burn-
ing, and not particularly good even for that."

LIBRARY

>

Leaves and Berries of the American Holly,

CONVERSATION V.

Uncle Philip's Visiters learn how to make
Canoes of Birch-hark ; and how to make
BirdliTne ; and the Uses of Oil, and the
Olive-tree. Uiicle Philip gives them a
short Lesson in Political JEconomj/,

" Well, my little utilitarians, I think you
will be pleased with the class of trees that we
shall talk about this morning. But I suppose
you hardly know what I mean by utilitarians :
it is a name given to people who think a
great deal about the useflilness of things, and
who are always studying, and contriving
how to employ them for their best purposes.
So I call you utilitarians, because you seem to
be so fond of the useful trees."

" And what are you going to tell us about
now, Uncle Philip ?"

" The birches ; one ot the most serviceable
of all the different kinds of trees that grow in
this country."

118 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

" We are always learning something from
you, Uncle Philip ; I did not know that there
were more than one sort of birch."

"There are, though, seven; but I shall
only describe five of them to you, because
the other two are so small that they cannot
be called trees ; they are, in fact, nothing but
shrubs. Four of these five sorts are distin-
guished from each other by the colour of their
bark, or of the wood: they are called the
white, the red, the yellow, and the black
birch. The other is called the canoe birch,
from one of the important uses made of the
bark."

" Uncle Philip, I have read of bark canoes,
made by the Indians ; and I suppose it is
birch bark they are made of, for I know it is
very tough and strong."

" Yes, birch bark is different from almost
every other ; the bark of most trees is brittle
and weak, and breaks very easily ; but birch
bark is a great deal like leather, and will bear
a great force without giving way. It comes
off in large pieces ; indeed, you might take
off the whole bark, with a little care. Did
you ever notice the seed or fruit of a birch ?"

^ Yes, sir, I have ; it is a long slender sort

TREES OF AMERICA. 119

of berry, somewhat like a mulberry, hanging
down from the branches ; those I have seen
were about an irich long, and as big round as
my little finger, and of a very light green
colour."

*'The kind you saw was a white birch,
then, or a canoe birch ; the seeds of the other
kinds are somewhat different: but you are
wrong in calling them berries ; they are
more like the cones of the magnolia, only
that they are so much smaller ; and they are
covered with little scales. The leaves are
notched at the edges, like the teeth of a saw,
very smooth, and dark green. The canoe
birch generally grows sixty or seventy feet
high, and the trunk is about three feet thick.
The heart, when cut open, is dark red, and
the rest of the wood perfectly white ; it is
strong, but rots very soon when exposed to
changes of weather, and therefore is not much
used: but it is sometimes found elegantly
shaded and veined, and then it is used for
cabinet-work, and for inlaying nmhogany."
"Birch wood burns well, Uncle Philip."
" Yes, it makes very good fuel, and great
quantities of it are consumed in this way.
But its great value lies in the bark. This, as

120 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

I have already told you, is exceedingly tough,
and strong, and flexible, and the Canadians
say it lasts for ever ; not that it does actually
l^ast for ever, for nothing that exists in this
world can do that ; but to whatever use it is
put, it lasts for a long time ; and I do not
know of any other substance so cheap, so
plentiful, and so easily procured in those parts
of the country where it is used, that would
answer as many purposes, and as well.
When the trees are small, that is, not more
than eight or nine inches thick, the bark is
of a brilliant white ; but on the larger trees, it
has more of a dusky hue : and it is so durable
that trees are often found lying upon the
ground that have fallen or been cut down so
long that the wood is perfectly rotten, and
yet the bark is as sound as ever. The uses
to which it is put are almost innumerable :
in Canada they place large pieces of it on the
roofs of houses immediately under the shin-
gles ; and they say that it makes the most perfect
and impenetFable covering ; not a drop of rain
can come in: they also make of it baskets,
and boxes, and portfolios, and ropes, and
harness, and seats for chairs, and even car-

TREES OF AMERICA. 121

pets ; you have seen the neat httle Indian
baskets, I dare say."

" Yes ; but, Uncle Phihp, they were not
white, but a sort of yellowish red ; and you
told us the bark was white."

" Ay, and so it is white on the tree ; but it
changes its colour when it is stripped off and
exposed for some time to the air ; the outer
bark makes very good paper."

" Paper, Uncle Philip !"

"Yes, paper: it is split into thin sheets,
and I can assure you that when there is no
better to be had, birch-bark paper is by no
means a bad thing to write on ; but, after all,
its greatest and best use is for making canoes.
You must know that great numbers of Cana-
dians are employed in making journeys and
voyages far into the interior of the country,
to trade with the Indians for furs and skins ;
and these journeys are made upon the great
rivers by means of canoes."

"But why do they not use boats. Uncle
Philip ?"

"Because there are many places in the
journeys where the voyageurs^ as they are
called, have to cross from one river to another
by land, or to avoid rapids ; and then they

K

122 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

are obliged to carry all their baggage upon
their backs, and their canoes, too, which they
can easily do, because they are so light : a
3anoe large enough for four persons, weighs
only forty or fifty pounds ; but a boat of the
same size would weigh more than twice as
much ; and besides, the canoes are not as
liable to injury as boats, and if they are
injured it is more easy to mend them."

"Uncle Philip, how do they make the
canoes ?"

" Why, in the first place, you know, they
must have large pieces of bark : to get these
they cut through the bark round the tree in
two places ten or twelve feet apart, and then
make an upright slit from one to the other ;
then they peel off the bark with the help of a
wooden wedge, and so tliey get off the whole
sheet without much trouble : these sheets are
generally ten or twelve feet long, and two
and a half wide : then they set up the frame
of the canoe, and stitch the sheets toofether
over it very strongly with roots of the white
spruce, which are tough and flexible like
twine, after they have been split and soaked
in water : then they cover over the seams
with the resinous sum of the balm of Gilead

TREES OF AMERICA. 123

or the pitch-pine, place seats in the inside,
and the canoe is complete, and ready to make
a voyage."

" And how large do they make them, Uncle
Philip ?"

" Sometimes large enough to carry fifteen
passengers with their baggage."

" Well, Uncle Philip, I think that is a very
good way to make a boat, and a very cheap
way, too ; a man wants nothing but a hatchet,
and a large needle, and some sort of a brush
to put on the gum with. Does the canoe
birch grow all over the country, Uncle
Philip ?"

" No ; it seems to be almost confined to the
northern portion of the continent ; it is very
plentifiil in Canada, and is found in con-
siderable quantities in Yermont, and New-
Hampshire, and Maine : farther south it is
quite rare.

" The white birch is more common as far
south as New-York and Pennsylvania, but is
never found iu the Southern States ; it is not
very abunda?]t, however, anywhere. It is
much smalle: than the canoe birch, and the
wood decays much faster and sooner : it is
seldom or never used, not even for burning'

124 ' CONVERSATIONS ON THE

the bark is much hke that of the canoe birch,
but It cannot be spHt into thi.i plates like that,
and of course, from the smallness of the tree,
such large sheets can never be got from it ;
in other respects these twc kinds are very-
much alike.

" The red birch, again, is still more of a
southern tree ; it is seldom found north of
New- Jersey, and in Maryland, Virginia, the
Carolinas, and Georgia, it is quite common.
It grows as large as the canoe birch ; the
leaves are of a lighter green, and the fruit has
more of a reddish cast"

" Ah, that is why they call it red birch, then,
I suppose ?"

" No ; it has its name f;om the outer bark,
which is quite red, and not white, like that of
the canoe birch ; it is much coarser, too, and
rougher : the inner bark is thick, rough, and
of a greenish colour."

" And can they make canoes and things of
it, Uncle Philip ?"

" No, it is neither so flexible, nor so tough
as that of the canoe birch. The wood is
better, however ; it is white, with fine red
streaks rnnning through it lengthwise. In
Virginia and Carolina they mate bowls anc

TREES OF AMERICA. 125

trays of it ; the saplings and small branches
are good for making hoops, and great quanti-
ties of the twigs are used in the manufacture
of birch brooms, for sweeping streets, and
yards, and such places ; you have seen them,
I dare say, for sale in the shops. The twigs
of the other kinds of birch are too brittle for
brooms.

" The yellow birch, like the canoe birch, is
confined to the northern parts of the continent
of North America, and it is probably the most
beautiful of all the varieties. It grows sixty
or seventy feet high, with a perfectly straight
trunk, on which no branches appear lower
than thirty or forty feet from the ground.
The outer bark, or epidermis, is of a bright
golden yellow, and it frequently divides itself
into fine strips, which are rolled backwards at
the ends, and stick to the inner bark at the
middle : the leaves and the bark have a very
pleasant smell : the fruit is light brown, and
oval-shaped : the wood is better than that of
all the other kinds, except the black ; it is
strong, dark-coloured, and when polished
makes handsome furniture. In Nova Scotia
and Maine it is a great deal used for ship
timber, and for the runners of sledges ; the

126 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

saplings are made into hoops ; and besides
this, great quantities of it are consumed as
fuel. The bark is highly esteemed for tan-
ning.

" But of all the birches, that which supplies
the best wood is the black. In some places
it is called cherry birch, and in others moun-
tain mahogany, but black birch is the most
common name. It is found in the Northern
or Eastern States, but abounds most in the
Middle, particularly in New- York and Penn-
sylvania. The leaves are very much like
those of the cherry-tree ; when bruised, they
give out a sweet and agreeable smelJ,
and retain this property when they are dried.
The bark of the young trees is smooth, grayish,
and in other respects exactly like that of the
cherry ; when the trees are old, ,the outer
bark cracks into plates six or eighit inches
wide.

^' The wood, when first cut, is rose-coioured,
but it soon becomes quite dark : the grain is
fine and close, and it takes a remarkably bril-
liant polish ; it is very strong, too ; and cabi-
net-makers in the country esteem it next to
the wood of the wild cherry. Tables, and
bedsteads, and other furniture made of it, in

TREES OF AMERICA. 127

time get to look much like mahogany,
if they are taken good care of; and it is
therefore used in the manufacture of chairs,
and sofas, and coach panels, and various kinds
of furniture. The bark is not made use of in
any way that I know, but I believe that it
might be used in tanning.

" There are two more uses of birch-trees of
which I must tell you, and then we shall have
done with them. The sap, which is very
abundant in all the kinds, can be boiled into
a sirup, that is sweet, rich, and pleasant,
although it will not turn into sugar. By
adding yest a good sort of beer may be made
of this sap, and by letting it stand in the sun,
it turns into vinegar. The other use is not
quite so pleasant to boys, but it does them a
great deal of good sometimes. Can you guess
what I mean ?"

" Is it for medicine, Uncle Philip ?"

" Why, yes, a sort of medicine ; it is given
when boys are naughty, not when they are
ill."

" Oh, I know what you mean now, Uncle
Philip ; it is for rods, to whip naughty boys
with."

" Yes ; the twigs of the red birch make

128 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

very good whips for idlers, and truants, and
mischievous children ; but I hope you are
too good ever to have them applied to you."

" Uncle Philip, I have sometimes found in
the woods just such little things as grow on
the birch-trees, about as long as my little
finger and as big round as a quill, hanging
from the ends of the branches of a veiy small
tree, not so high as a peach-tree ; but I do
not think it was a birch, for the leaves were a
great deal larger."

"I suppose it was the alder; one of the
smallest trees that grow in this country
There are two sorts, the common alder and
the black ; but the black alder is scarcely ever
found except in Massachusetts and Vermont,
and even there it is not at all common. The
other kind grows all over the United States.
The black alder is sometimes found as many
as eighteen or twenty feet high, and three
inches thick. The bark is the only part that
is made use of; it makes a black die, that
is used by hatters. There is an alder
that grows in Europe which is much larger ;
sometimes fifty feet high, and the wood is a
great deal used : but this kind has never been
found in the United States. It will probably

TREES OF AMERICA. 129

be cultivated here at some future time, for it
is thought a great deal of in England and
France."

" Oh, I hope not, Uncle Philip ; I hope we
shall never go to other countries for trees,
when we have so many, and such fine ones
of our own."

" Now, my dear, that is a very foolish notion
of yours ; why should we not seek for good
things wherever they are to be found ? Sup-
pose the people of other countries should
think the same way, and refuse to come to us
for our cotton, and wheat, and our oak staves,
and all the other things that are cultivated or
made in this country on purpose to be sold tc
other countries ; would not that be a great
loss to our farmers ? Now I am always glad
to see the blessings which God has sent into
the world distributed among all countries,
and enjoyed by all people : we have given to
Europe one of the most valuable trees in the
world, and it is but right that we should
get from it any that may be v/anting here."

" What tree is that, Uncle Philip, that we
have given to Europe ?"

" The locust ; as I have already said, one
of the most valuable of all the trees."

130 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

" It is not as useful as the oak, is it, sir ?"
" No ; that is, it is not appKed to as many
purposes ; but it has a great many merits.
It grows all over the United States, except in
the northern parts ; but the largest trees are
found in the fertile lands of the Western States,
where .they are often seen eighty feet high,
and four feet thick: in this neighbourhood,
you know, it never attains half that size.
There are five kinds of locust, but I suppose
you have never seen any except what is
called the sweet or honey locust, which is
common enough all about here."

" Oh yes, we know that kind very well,
Uncle Philip ; it has small leaves, and long
sharp thorns, and small white flowers that
are very sweet ; and after the flowers are
gone, the tree bears long flat pods, like pea-
pods, only a great deal longer and wider, and
of a dark red colour, almost black ; and these
pods have little brown beans in them, that
are almost as hard as stone."

" And is there nothing else peculiar about
it ? What is it that gives it its name ?"
" Oh, the honey that grows in the pod."
" Very true ; the most common of all the
kinds is called simply the locust ; and it is

TREES OF AMERICA. 131

very much like the sweet locust in all the
particulars you have mentioned, except that
the pods are not near as large, and the flowers
are both larger, and have a stronger perfume.
The thorns, too, are only found on the young
trees ; when they grow older the thorns all fall
off. Tho^wood is yellow, with a very slight
tinge of green ; and it is for the excellence
of the wood that the locust is so much valued.
There are but very few kinds that will last as
long without rotting."

" And is it strong, too ?"

" Yes, very strong and compact ; and it
can be polished, and made to look very beau-
tiful."

" And what is it used for. Uncle Philip ?"

" Where it is very plentiful, it is a great
deal used for fencing-stuff; posts that have
been well seasoned before they are set in the
ground will last forty years ; and they are so
much esteemed that they sell for as many as
forty and fifty cents apiece. Shipwrights
are very fond of locust-wood, too ; it is as
durable as the live oak, although not quite as
strong ; but then it is lighter, which is an ad
vantage. They use it for the frame timbers,
and also for the iruniiels, or pins that the

132 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

planks are fastened to the frame with ; the
older these trunnels are, the harder they get.
It is used, too, in houses ; but it is too good
and too costly to be much employed for house-
timber. Turners make great use of it in
making boxes, and salad-forks, and other
small articles for housekeeping.

" Another great excellence of the locust is,
that it grows so rapidly ; more than twice as
fast as the oak. It is very hardy, too, and
will grow in almost any climate ; but it thrives
most in warm countries.

" The rose-flowering locust is one of the
five varieties which I mentioned ; it is very
similar to the locust, except that it is never
found more than half as large ; that the
flowers are of a beautiful rose-colour, and
have no smell ; and that the leaves are con-
siderably larger : the pods are of the same
size with those of the locust, but they are
covered with a sort of hair or furze. The
wood is equally good, but it is so small that
little use can be made of it as timber, and the
tree is chiefly admired and cultivated as an
ornament to gardens and plantations. It
grows wild only in the mountainous parts ol
the Carol inas and Georgia.

TREES OF AMERICA. 133

" There is another species of locust, that is
always called yellow-wood in Tennessee,
where it is found. It is a small tree, seldom
growing more than thirty feet high : it diifers
from the locust in the bark, which is smooth,
whereas that of all the other kinds is quite
rough, and in the leaves, which are a great
deal larger. The flowers are like those of the
locust, but not as sweet-smelling, and they
hang in large elegant bunches. The heart
of the tree is of a brilliant yellow, and it gives
its colour to water ; but as yet no use has
been made of it in dying, because the stain is
not permanent : perhaps somebody will find
out a way of preventing it from fading oi
washing out.

" The sweet locust, or honey locust, as I
have told you already, is much like the
locust in size, and in some other particulars.
It differs from it in the bark, in the form of the
trunk, which almost always appears twisted,
and in the quality of the wood, which is coarser-
grained, and neither so strong nor so lasting.
But the greatest difference is in the honey
contained in the pods, and in the enormous
size of the pods themselves. How large were
those you have seen?''

134 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

" Oh; vsry large. Uncle Philip ; some of
them more than a foot long."

" Yes ; and none of the other kinds have
pods more than three or four inches long : and
the pods of the water locust, which is the last,
are still smaller and of a different shape, too,
for they are almost as broad as they are long ;
they grow together in bunches, and each pod
has in it but one seed, whereas all the other
kinds have three or four seeds in each
pod."

" Does it grow in the water. Uncle Philip ?"

" Yes ; it is never found except in swamps,
where the soil is constantly wet, and often
overflowed when the waters rise in the rivers.
It, grows fifty or sixty feet high, and a foot
and a half or two feet in diameter. The
bark of the young trees is smooth, but on the
old ones it is cracked like the bark of the
oak. The branches are armed with thorns,
but they are not as long as those of the honey
locust : the leaves are almost the same :
the flowers are quite small, and green : the
wood is very inferior, and no use is made of it,
I believe.

" Now, my dears, here is a picture for you
to look at; notice the prickly leaves, with

TREES OF AMERICA. 135

little sharp hooks growing out of the edges,
and the brilliant red berries : can any of you
tell me what tree they belong to ?" (See p.
116)

" I know. Uncle Philip ; it is the holly : I
have seen it at cousin Mary's, over on Long
Island, when I went there for the Christmas
holydays : they dressed up the church with
it."

" Yes, I know that is often done ; it is an
evergreen, and one of the most beautiful too ;
the leaves are so bright, and the berries so red.
In England they always use it at Christ-
mas, to dress up the churches and houses :
in this part of the country it is not as common
as it is in the Southern States ; but I have
seen great quantities of it in New- Jersey, and
it is spreading more to the north. It gen-
erally grows to the height of thirty or forty
feet ; the flowers are white, and not remark-
able either for size or beauty : the wood is fine,
compact, and heavy, and very brilliant when
polished : it is naturally of a brown colour,
but it is generally died black for cabinet-
makers' use ; they employ it for inlaying
mahogany. Turners use it for making
screws, and for small boxes of superior finish

136 CONVERSATIONS ON THE i

"1

and quality. It is very good for making the j
wheels of pulleys, and ship blocks ; but lig-
numvitae is still better. ,The holly is much ;
used by engravers on wood, too, for the blocks
on which they cut their engravings." i

" Do you know what bird-lime is ?" I

" I never saw any. Uncle Philip, but I have
read about it ; it is a sort of sticky paste, I
believe, that they use in England, and some •
other places, to catch birds with, alive. They
smear it over the branches of the trees, and *
when the birds alight on them, they stick fast,
and cannot fly away."

"Yery true; well, the best bird-lime is
made of the inner bark of the holly ; it is first
pounded into a paste, and then left in a
cellar, or some cool place, to ferment : after it
has fermented, the paste is washed, to clear it
from the fibres, and then mixed with a little
sweet oil, and kept in tight bottles or pots till
it is wanted for use."

" Uncle PhiHp, are the berries as good to
eat as they are pretty to look at ?"

" No, by no means ; on the contrary, they
have some medicinal properties : but there
are so many other medicines that are more j
eas]?- to take, and much more certain and safe i

TREES OF AMERICA. 137

in their operation, that they are very seldom
made use of, except to ornament churches and
rooms at Christmas. In England, hedges are
very often made of a small kind of holly, and
very beautiful they are too."

" What are hedges. Uncle Philip ?"

"Fences made of small trees and shrubs
planted close together in lines ; they are not
much used in this country, but why, I am
sure I do not know, for they are much more
handsome than fences either of stone or wood,
and they last longer, too, and keep cattle out
better."

" Perhaps it is because they take a long time
to grow high enough, Uncle Philip."

" Perhaps it is ; but whatever the reason
may be, I should be very glad to see the
fashion of making hedges introduced : in
England you will see twenty hedges to one
fence ; and they add very much to the ap-
pearance of the country. You have eaten
sorrel, I dare say, very often."

" Yes, sir ; it is very sour and nice."

" And did you ever meet with a tree with
leaves that tasted exactly like sorrel ?"

" No Uncle Philip : I never heard of any

1'3B CONVliRSATIONS ON THE

such tree. Does it grow anywhere about
here ?"

" No, I beheve not ; at least I never met
with it anywhere except in the Southern
States, beginning at Virginia and ending xu
Georgia. It is sometimes found of a good
size ; forty or fifty feet high, and a foot and a
half in diameter ; but in general it is so small
that it cannot properly be called any thing
more than a shrub. The flowers are small
and white, and grow in long strings ; collected
in bunches they look very pretty. The wood
is perfectly useless, but the sour leaves are
sometimes used in dying, when better materials
cannot be had : they yield a good black."

" Uncle Philip, it seems very strange to me
that things of so many difierent tastes and
colours should all grow out of the same
ground ; some are sweet, and some sour, and
some bitter ; some have red flowers, and others
white ; I have heard and read that trees and
plants are nourished by the moisture that they
get from the ground ; but this moisture must
be the same, I suppose, everywhere, and 1
cannot imagine how it turns into so many
different things."

" Neither can I, my dear, nor any one else ;

TREES OF AMERICA. 139

this is one of the wonders of God's providence,
that can never be understood or found out by
the wisdom of man. Curious and astonishing
it is, to be sure, and so is every thing around
us ; the wisest man that ever hved knew no
more about such wonders than you ; and it
is a good lesson for people who are proud and
vain of their learning, to know that the growth
of even so little a thing as a blade of grass, is
just as much beyond their comprehension as
the motions of the sun and the stars, or the
secrets that lie hid in the very lowest depths
of the ocean, are beyond the capacity of a child."

" Uncle Philip, when you told us about the
walnuts, I thought it very strange that the sap
of a tree should ever turn to oil ; but now
when I think of it, I see that there is nothing
more strange in this than in any thing else
about trees."

" Very true, my dear. But I suppose you
know that the walnuts are not the only trees
that produce oil ; you have tasted sweet oil, I
dare say, or at least you have seen it used for
salad."

" Oh yes. Uncle Philip ; but sweet oil does
not come from a tree, does it, sir ?"

" Yes, but it does — from the olive ; and a

140 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

most valuable tree it is too. In France, and
Spain, and Italy, where the finest olives are
found, it is considered the first among trees,
the pride of the forest ; and yet it is by no
means remarkable for beauty ; on the contrary,
it is a rather insignificant little tree in appear-
ance, seldom rising more than eighteen or
twenty feet high ; but this is where it is culti-
vated ; the wild trees are found much larger.
Olives are very long-lived ; they will continue
to bear fruit, it is said, for more than two
hundred years. The flowers are small and
white, and have a slight perfume. The wood
is strong, heavy, compact, and brilliant when
polished : it is used by turners, and in making
small articles of furniture, such as dressing
cases, (fee, and it burns extremely well ; but
the value of the fruit is so great that the trees
are seldom cut down, either for manufacturers*
use or for fuel. This fruit is in appearance
something like a small plum, only that it is
considerably longer than it is broad, and it has
in it a stone of nearly the same shape ; and it
is from these fruits or olives that sweet oil is
obtained. Vast quantities of them are pickled
too in salt and water. I suppose you know
most of the uses of oil ?"

TREES OF AMERICA. 141

" Yes, sir ; for eating, and burning in lamps ;
and it is very good for curing burns and
scalds ; and for putting on hones to sharpen
knives and razors."

" Very true ; but these are only some of its
uses. It is an indispensable article in the
preparation of a great many ointments and
other medicinal articles ; in the making and
polishing, as well as the sharpening, of all sorts
of edge tools ; it is used too for keeping steel,
and iron, and brass from becoming rusty ; in
softening horn and tortoise-shell for the manu-
facture of combs, &c. ; in the preparation of
leather ; and, in short, there is scarcely any
manufacture in which oil is not of great ser-
vice. But, after all, one of the most important
uses to which it is put, is in diminishing the
friction of all kinds of machinery. You know
how much more easily a wagon or carriage
will run when the wheels and axles are greased,
than when they are dry ; the grease or oil
makes the parts that touch slip smoothly over
each other ; and you can imagine of what
service this property is in the vast quantities
of machinery of all kinds that have been in-
vented, and are now used in the production
of almost every necessary as well as luxury

142 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

of life. I suppose that with some of the most
complicated machines, such for example as
the cylinder printing-press, one man could do
more by the help of a little oil than two, or even
three, could without it ; and that a small boy,
like one of you, could turn a piece of machin-
ery that was well oiled for half a day at a time,
whereas if the wheels and other parts that
rubbed against each other were dry, it would
tire a strong man in less than an hour."

" And is there nothing else that would do
as well, Uncle Philip ?"

" No, nothing ; grease or fat would, perhaps,
answer for large coarse machinery, but it
would clog up and stop the finer kinds, such
as watches and clocks, and a great many
other delicate contrivances that have been in-
vented for various purposes."

"But, Uncle Philip, is that olive oil that
people burn in lamps ? It looks very different
from the sweet oil that we buy in bottles."

" No, lamp oil is got from whales, and some
other kinds of large fish ; olive oil is too costly
to be used for burning. Whale oil may be
purified, and made to look almost as transpa
rent as olive oil ; and, indeed, the best lamp oi
is almost perfectly clear and colourless."

TREES OF AMERICA. 143

"Uncle Philip, I thought sweet oil came
from foreign countries ; I never heard of olives
growing in the United States."

'^ You are quite right, my boy ; it is from
the southern parts of Europe that we get
our sweet oil, and our olives. But I have
described the tree to you, partly because it is
so extremely useful, and partly because there
is a small tree which is found, although not
abundantly, in some parts of the Southern
States, and which is no doubt a species of
olive ; perhaps it wants nothing but cultiva-
tion to become as valuable as the European.
It sometimes grows twenty-five or thirty feet
high, but not very often ; its general height
is eight or ten feet. The leaves are a great deal
larger than those of the European olive, but
in other respects very much like them. They
are evergreen. The olive is round, about
as large as a small cherry, of a dark purple
colour, and consists of a stone covered with a
very thin coating of pulp and skin. They
are harsh and disagreeable to the taste, and
no attempt has been made to get oil from
them, that I know of. In fact, the quantity
of pulp on each is so small that there would
not be oil enough to pay for the trouble. The
wood is heavy and very close-grained, and

144 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

when quite dry, it is excessively hard, zind
difficult either to cut or to split ; for this rea-
son, it has the name of devil-wood given to
it by the people who live where it is found."

" Uncle Philip, since the olive is so good
and so useful in those countries where it
grows, 1 should think it would be a good
plan to take pains with the devil-wood, and
try to improve it. Do not you think so too,
sir r

" I do, indeed ; by grafting slips of the
European olive upon our wild kind, I have
no doubt very excellent fruit might be got ;
and I dare say it will be done by-and-by,
when the Floridas are more thickly inhabited
than they are now. The climate there is
quite as mild as in Italy, and besides, the
devil-wood or wild olive is much more hardy
than the European kind."

" Uncle Philip, it seems to me that we
might raise in this country almost all the
nice things that we get from others. I know
that sugar grows in the Southern States, and
I have heard father say that tea and coffee
would grow in Florida, if they were properly
cultivated : and then if we had olive-trees and
could make our own oil, it would save us a

;S OF AMERICA. 145

great deal of money, would it not, Uncle
Philip r

" Perhaps it would, my dear ; but I am not
by any means certain about it : perhaps the
tea and the olives would cost us more than
they do now."

"How can that be. Uncle Philip?"

"Because both tea and olives require a
great deal of preparation before they are fit to
use ; and the workmen employed in preparing
them might, perhaps, be doing much better
by cultivating grain, or cotton, or sugar. In
China, where we get our tea, and in Italy,
where the oil is made, the country is very
thickly inhabited, and because there are so
many people ready to work, wages are very
low ; but in this country there is always
plenty of work for people to do, and workmen
can get much higher wages ; so that the
labour necessary to prepare a pound of tea
for exportation would not cost, in China, one-
half, — no, perhaps not one-quarter so much
as it would in Florida. Therefore, you see,
it might not be cheaper for us to raise our
own tea, after all."

" Well, that is very true, Uncle Philip ; I
never thought of that."

J 46 CONVERSATIONS.

" I will tell you a story. A farmer once
had a few acres of land, which, by his great
industry, gave him and his family a good
living- One day a gold mine was discovered
in his ground ; and he began to dig for the
precious metal, rejoicing in the hope of abun-
dant riches. But it lay very deep, and he
had to hire men to help him ; and then his
wife and children wanted food and clothes ;
he had no money, and his farm, you know,
brought him nothing while he was digging.
He sold his horse, then his oxen, then his
cow and pigs ; and when they were gone, he
ran in debt. At last he found some gold, but
it was in the ore, and had to be pounded, and
washed, and melted, and all this was expen-
sive. At the end of the year, he had got
several pounds, but it all went to pay his debts.
His horse and cattle, his crops and his gold
were all gone ; and he had been working hard
all this time only to find himself poorer than
when he began. He had bought wisdom,
however. He gave up his digging and went
to work again on his farm ; but it was not
until after several years of hard labour that
he recovered v/liat he had lost by his gold
mine."

FORBES
UBRARY

The White Poplar,

CONVERSATION YI.

Uncle Philip and his Young' FrienSL talk
about Poplars, and Aspens, and Pcrstin-
mons, and Wild-cherries, and the Cabbage-
tree, and Chestnuts, and Chincapins. ZJjicle
Philij), among other things, describes the
great Chestnut on Mount Etna, called the
Chestnut of the Hundred Horses.

" I THINK T have two or three trees to tell
you about to day, my children, that you will
be glad to make acquaintance with ; partly
because of their utility, and still more on ac-
count of their fruit, which I dare say you
have eaten many a time. I mean the wild
cherries."

" Oh yesj Uncle Philip, they seem like old
friends. But I did not know that there wf^ie
more than one kind of wild cherries."

" There are three, but there is only one of
them that you are likely to be acquainted
with, for the other two are found only in remote

150 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

parts of the country. The wild cherry-tree,
then, the only kind that grows ahout here, is
one of the largest productions of the American
forests. It grows in every part of the United
States, but it is not common either at the north
ern or southern extremities of the country ; in
all the Middle States, in Yirginia, and on the
banks of the Western rivers, it is very abun-
dant, and it is in the Western States of Ohio,
Tennessee, and Kentucky, that it grows to
its largest dimensions. I have heard of wild
cherry-trees there from twelve to sixteen feet
round, and ninety or a hundred feet high."

" Why, Uncle Philip, that is almost as large
as the sycamores, that you told us of."

" Yes, next to the sycamores, and the tulip-
trees, the wild cherries are most frequently
found of enormous size. The leaves are five
or six inches long, of a beautiful light green,
and notched at the edges into very fine teeth,
smaller than the teeth of the finest saw. The
flowers are quite small, white, and consist of
five little petals, or leaves, marked with pink
spots. They grow in long spikes or stalks,
and look very pretty. The cherries are about
the size of a pea, and when ripe, almost black;
they grow in the same manner as the flowers,

TREES OF AMERICA. 151

a number of them on a long spike or stem,
and not hanging down singly or in bunches
of two or three, like the common cherries,
that grow in gardens. They are bitter, and
not very good to eat ; nevertheless, the
birds devour them greedily ; and people use
them to make cherry-brandy, which is cer-
tainly pleasant enough to the taste, but, like
all other strong liquors, very poisonous and
destructive."

" Uncle Philip, I have seen the pigs eat the
cherries, after they had been used to make
cherry-brandy, and were thrown out into the
street ; the pigs staggered about just as if they
were drunk."

'' I dare say they were, too ; for, by being
soaked in the brandy, the cherries become
very strong. Now there was some excuse
for the pigs, because they knew no better;
but what a shocking thing it is for a man to
drink liquor, which he knows very well will
take away his senses, and make him reel
about, ana fall down in the dirt, like a beast.
The cherries had much better be left for the
birds, than made into such ruinous stufF.^

" Uncle Philip, when you began to tell us
about the wild cherry, you said that we

152 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

should be glad to hear about it on account
of its utility ; you did not mean making the
cherries into brandy, did you, sir ?"

" By no means ; it was on account of the
wood that I said the wild cherry was useful.
This wood when it is first cut, is of a dull
hght red colour, but the red grows deeper
with age. It is almost as hard as mahogany,
very solid and heavy, and polishes exceed-
ingly well. In the country, where mahogany
is not so easily got as in the cities, the wild
cherry wood is almost universally used in-
stead of it, for making furniture of all kinds ;
and in the Western States it is also employed
in ship-building. It has one excellent qual-
ity, in great perfection, and that is, that it
does not warp by exposure to heat or damp,
as many other kinds of wood do.

" You remember I told you that there were
three kinds of wild cherry. One of the
other two kinds is called the wild orange,
and the third the red cherry. The wild
orange is a very scarce tree ; I have never
heard of its being found in the United States,
anywhere except on the islands that lie along
the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas."

TREES OF AMERICA. ' 153

" Uncle Philip, why is it called wild orange,
if it is really a cherry ?"

" I believe it is on account of the leaves,
which are evergreen, like the leaves of the
orange, and are shaped more like them than
they are like cherry leaves. The flowers, too,
are much smaller, and they grow in little
bunches of an inch or an inch and a half
long ; but the fruit is exactly like that of
the wild cherry. The wood is nearly the
same too, but the tree is smaller, and besides,
it is so scarce that no particular use is made
of it ; 1 have heard that bees are more fond
Df the flowers of the wild orange than of the
flowers of any other tree.

" The red cherry is common only in the
northern parts of the United States; it is
much smaller than the wild cherry, but the
leaves and flowers are very nearly the same.
The cherries are of a bright red, and exces-
sively sour. The wood is as good as that of
the wild cherry, but it never grows large
enough to be made use of to any extent, ex-
cept for burning. There is one peculiarity
about this tree which nobody has yet been
able to account for ; and that is, its springing
up of itself, where the woods have been

164 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

cleared away by fires ; the canoe birch aoes
the same, and these two are the only trees of
which this fact has been noticed.

" Now, my dears, here is a nut ; can j'ou
tell me what the name of it is ?"

" Oh yes, to be sure we can, Uncle Phihp ;
it is a horse-chestnut."

" Yery right ; and now can you tell me
what this is ? you see it is exactly like the
other, except that it is not much more than
half as large."

" Why, that is a horse-chestnut too, Uncle
Philip."

"Very right again, but the large one is the
Asiatic, and the other the American ; that is,
the small one is a native of this country, and
the other came originally from Asia, although
it is now very common in this country. This
small horse-chestnut is called, in order to distin-
guish it from the other, and, from the spot on
one side of it, the buck-eye; and from its being
found only on the banks of the Ohio River,
some writers call it the Ohio buck-eye. The
tree on which it grows is quite small, seldom
exceeding ten or twelve feet in height ; the
leaves grow in a curious fashion ; five of
them are always found springing from one

TREES OF AMERICA. 155

Stem, and forming a sort of star ; the flowers
are yellowish white, and grow in long clus-
ters or bunches : the nuts grow in prickly-
cases or husks ; they are not good to eat,
and the wood of the tree is white, soft, and
perfectly useless.

"Now herejs another buck-eye, much largei
than the other ; this is also a native of Amer
ica, and grows in the mountainous parts of
the Southern States, where it is known by the
name of big buck-eye. The tree is large and
handsome, shooting up to the height of sixty
or seventy feet ; the leaves are larger and
longer than those of the Ohio buck-eye ; they
grow in the same way, five on a stem, but
with this difference that they are always found
hanging down. The flowers are light yellow,
and grow in large upright bunches ; they are
very abundant, and when the tree is covered
with them, it has a beautiful appearance with
its leaves hanging down in star-like clusters,
and its rich yellow flowers. The principal
difference between the large buck-eye and the
Asiatic horse-chestnut, is in the husk or case
which surrounds the nut. In the Asiatic
kind, and also in the Ohio buck-eye, this husk
is covered with prickles, but in the big buck-

156 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

eye, it is pite smooth. The wood is soft,
and good for nothing-. The only value of
both these trees is in their appearance, and in
their hardiness; they bear cold extremely
well, and grow very fast, and for these rea-
sons are much esteemed for purposes of orna-
ment : as for utility, they have no pretensions
on that score.

"I have a fruit tree now to describe to you,
my dears, which I suspect you have never
seen. The fruit looks something like a plum,
only it is yellow instead of purple ; its name
is the persimmon : it grows, I am told, in New-
Jersey and Pennsylvania, but I never saw it
except in Virginia and North Carolina ; it is
very common there, and in the other Southern
States, and the people think very highly of it,
not only on account of the fruit, but also
for the goodness of the wood. It grows from
forty to sixty feet high there, but in the more
northern parts of the country its size is
much less. The leaves are from four to six
mches long, green on the upper side, and
white below."

" Uncle Philip, I have seen persimmons at
the fruit-shops in New- York ; they were quite
shrivelled, and the man that kept the shop told

TREES OF AMERICA. 167

me they were not fit to eat until they were
frost-bitten,"

" Yes, my dear, that is true ; until the frost
touches them they are very harsh, and make
the mouth feel rough ; but after that, they
are quite nice. If you had ever opened one,
you would see that it had inside of it six or
eight seeds, very hard, and shaped something
hke the seed of a pumpion, but of a dark
brown colour, and not more than half as
large. Pigs and cattle, and in fact most ani-
mals that eat fruit, both wild and tame, are
very fond of persimmons ; the opossums live
on them almost entirely. In Carolina the
people make beer of them too ; they pound
the persimmons with bran, and make them into
cakes, which are dried in the oven, and then
kept till they are wanted : to make the beer,
these cakes are dissolved in warm water, and
yest and hops are put to it ; after standing
a little while, it ferments, and makes an
agreeable drink.

" The heart of the persimmon is brown,
hard, compact, strong, and very elastic, like
hickory ; the other part of the wood is of a
greenish colour. From the solidity and hard-
ness of the heart, it is very good for large

158 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

screws, and for mallets, such as are used by tin-
men and carpenters. In Philadelphia, lasts for
shoes are made of persimmon wood ; in North
Carolina they make wedges of it, for splitting
logs ; in South Carolina the shafts of gigs are
generally made of persimmon wood, and I
have been told that there is scarcely any other
kind so good for this purpose. A gum may
be obtained by piercing the bark, but in very
small quantities, and I do not know that it is
good for much ; the bark is exceedingly
bitter, and I have heard that it is useful for
medicinal purposes ; but I suspect that the
Peruvian bark is a great deal better.

"The next kind of tree that I have to
describe to you is one that you are pretty
familiar with, at least with one of its varie-
ties,— the poplar."

" Oh yes. Uncle Philip, we have seen hun-
dreds of them ; they grow almost every-
where."

" And yet the kind you know so well is not
a native American tree ; the poplar that is so
common is called the Lombardy poplar, and
the reason why it is so much cultivated in
preference to the other kinds is, that it grows
so fast ; but none of them are of much use as

TREES OF AMERICA. 159

timber, because the wood is soft, and not du-
rable.

Of American poplars there are eight kinds :
the first is called the Carolinian poplar, from
its being more common in North and South
Carolina than in any other parts of the coun-
try ; it is one of the largest, being sometimes
eighty feet high, and thick in proportion.
The leaves are smooth, and of a bright green,
and notched at the edge ; it is curious that
they are much larger on young trees than on
old ones ; they are heart-shaped, seven or
eight inches long, and about as wide in the
broadest part ; at the top they rise to a sharp
point. The bark of the young branches is
marked with projecting ridges of a reddish
colour, but these disappear as the branches
grow older. None of the poplars bear flowers,
but in the spring of the year they put forth
green buds, which are sometimes used in
dying ; the wood of the Carolinian poplar is
white, soft, of no value as timber, and of but
very little for fuel."

" Uncle Philip, is it not with poplar buds
that people die eggs at Paas ?"

"Yes, where that Dutch custom is kept up."

" The next kind is the Canadian poplar, or,

160 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

as some call it, cotton-wood. As you may
suppose from the name, it grows in the
northern parts of the country : I have seen
one on the banks of the Genesee Rivei., m
the State of New- York, eighty feet high and
four feet thick ; but in general it does not
grow quite so large as this. The leaves are
very much like those of the Carolinian poplar,
but not quite as large; the stems on which
they grow are often of a bright red, and the
branches, instead of being round like those of
most other trees, have angles or corners run-
ning along lengthwise, the edges of which
are white ; and the trunk is almost always
angular too ; and this is also the case with
the Carolinian poplar. The wood is no
better.

" Another kind is the American black pop-
lar, which also grows only in the Northern
States : it is much smaller than either of the
two kinds I have mentioned, for it is seldom
seen more than forty or fifty feet high. The
bark is grayish white, and the buds are brown ;
the leaves are quite small, not more than
three inches long, and two broad ; one of the
distinguishing features of this species is the
hairiness of the young shoots, and of the

TREES OF AMERICA. I6l

Stems ; and this same hairiness is found too
on the backs of the young leaves.

" The Virginian poplar is sixty or seventy
feet high ; the trunk is round, and not with
angles, like most of the other kinds. The
leaves are small, heart-shaped, and as broad
as they are long ; the young branches are
angular, but as they grow old they become
round ; the wood is very soft, and is never
used except for burning.

" The fifth kind of poplar is called cotton-
tree."

"Why, Uncle Philip, you told us about
that a little while ago."

" No, that was the cotton-wood ; the name
of cotton-tree is given to another kind ; it is
a very bad plan to give names so much alike
to diiferent species, but we must take them
as we find them. The cotton-wood, however,
is very much like the cotton-tree ; it grows in
the Southern States, but is by no means com-
mon there : it is a fine large tree, seventy or
eighty feet high ; the branches are round, and
not angular like those of the cotton-tree ; the
leaves are covered, when quite young, with a
thick white down, which gradually goes off
on the upper side, leaving it perfectly smooth

N

162 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

The wood is very soft and light, and of no
service either in the arts or in manufactures.

" The balsam poplar grows in Canada, and
in still more northern parts of the country,
but is very rare in the United States ; it
grows as high as eighty feet. In the spring,
when the buds begin to come out, they are
covered with a yellowish gum, of a very
agreeable smell. The leaves are deep green
on the upper side, and silvery white below.
There is another kind of balsam poplar that
does grow in some of the northern parts of
the United States, particularly in Rhode
Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont. The
leaves are three times as large as those of the
other kind, perfectly heart-shaped, and the
stems they grow on are covered with hair or
down. The buds are covered with the same
sort of balsam or gum. This species never
grows more than fifty feet high, and the bark
is quite smooth.

" The remaining two sorts of poplar are
known by the name of aspen. The first is
called American aspen, and is common enough
in the northern and middle sections of the
country ; its height is generally about thirty
feet, and its diameter only five or six inches.

TREES OF AMERICA. 163

The bark is green and smooth, and the leaves
are about two inches wide, heart-shaped, and
terminating in a sharp point ; the stems on
which they grow are long and slender,
and so very flexible that the leaves dance
about with the slightest breath of wind, and
are never still for a moment. The other
kind is called the large aspen : it grows in
the same sections of country with the first
kind, but it is not common. It is about forty
feet high and ten or twelve inches thick. The
trunk is quite straight, and covered with a
smooth green bark. The leaves, like those of
the smaller kind, are covered with thick white
down in the spring, which goes oft' as the sum
mer advances. They are almost round, two or
three inches wide, and bordered with large
teeth.

" All the poplars have their seeds gro wing-
in bunches, two or three inches long, and as
big round as a quill, hanging from the ends
of the branches. You have seen them, I dare
say, in the summer."

" Yes, sir : they lie about under the trees,
and look very much like some sorts of cater-
pillars."

" 1 suppose you have not been much in-

164 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

terested about the different kinds of poplar-
tree, and indeed they have not much to re-
commend them."

" No indeed, Uncle Philip ; we Uke much
better to hear about trees that are useful, like
the oaks and the sugar maple, or curious like
the holly, or beautiful like the magnolia."

"Well, we shall soon come to some that you
will like better ; some that bear nuts, and
them I know you are fond of. But, first of
all, I have two to describe to yoii that are
somewhat remarkable. Here is a picture of
one of them. Have you ever seen such a
tree ?"

"Why, Uncle Philip, that does not look like
a tree ; it looks more like a high post set in
the ground, with a few bunches of curious
leaves fastened on the top.* Does it grow
that way, sir ?"

" Indeed it does ; the name of it is the cab-
bage-tree ; and this name is given to it be-
cause a part of the leaf is eaten with oil and
vinegar, like a salad, when it is young, and
it tastes very much like an uncooked cab-
bage."

•^ See Vignette on the title page.

TREES OF AMERICA. 165

" But how do they get them, Uncle Philip?
Nobody could ever climb such a tree as that,
I should think. But perhaps it does not grow
very high."

"But it does, though, forty or fifty feet;
and when the people want to get the branches
they have to cut the tree down."

" Well, it seems to me that is taking a
great deal of trouble."

" So it is ; and a great waste too, for the
cabbage-tree grows very slowly ; I have heard
that it is more than a hundred years in reach-
ing its full size. It belongs to the class or
genus of the palms or palmettoes, and they
are all slow growing trees."

" Oh, Uncle Philip, is it from the leaves of
the cabbage-tree that the palmetto fans are
made, that are sold in the stores ?"

" No, those fans are made of the leaf of
another kind of palm, that grows in Africa
and Asia. The cabbage-tree is the only
species of palm that is found in the United
States, and it grows only in the most southern
parts of the country. As you see in the pic-
ture, the trunk is smooth, and almost of the
same size all the way up ; and its straightness
and height, with the large spreading summit

166 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

of leaves with which it is crowned, give it a
very majestic appearance. The leaves are
of a brilliant green, and spread out like a fan ;
these leaves are of different sizes, from twelve
inches to five feet long, and are borne upon
stems nearly two feet in length, all springing
together from the very top of the tree; the leaves
are so arranged that the smallest grow in the
centre, and the largest spread out around, so
that the summit of the tree is quite round, and
of a regular shape, like a wheel or an um-
brella. When the leaves are young they are
folded up just like a fan, and spread out as they
grow older. It is the base of the leaf that is
eaten ; that is, the part where all the stalks
or sticks grow close together, like the sticks
of a fan ; it is white and tender, and makes
a very good salad. Do you see the clusters
of little black berries growing among the
leaves ?"

" Yes, sir ; they seem to be very small for
such a large tree. They are the fruit, I sup-
pose ; are they good to eat, Uncle Philip?"

" No, not at all. They are about as large
as a pea ; and before they appear, the stems
on which they hang are covered with clusters
of little green flowers."

TREES OF AMERICA. 167

" Uncle Philip it seems to me that it is a
great pity to cut down such a fine looking
tree, unless the wood is useful."

"It is useful for one purpose, although
very coarse-grained and porous, and neither
hard nor tough. You know what docks and
wharves are ; and you have seen that wharves
are generally made of timber : now there is
in sea-water a species af worm that eats
wood ; and these worms are sadly destructive
to wharves, by boring holes into the timbers ;
I have seen logs taken out of wharves, that
were bored through and through in every
direction, so that pieces of them looked very
much like pieces of honey-comb."

" And will not these worms eat the wood
of the cabbage-tree ?"

" No ; I suppose there is something in it
that they do not like, for they have never been
known to injure wharves made of it."

" Uncle Philip, does the cabbage-tree grow
in England ?"

" No, my boy ; but why do you ask ?"

"Because I have read about very large docks
and wharves there, and I was thinking that
the worms must give them a great deal of

168 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

trouble, if they have no cabbage-tree wood to
make them of."

" But they have what is better ; plenty of
stone : all those large docks you have read
of are built of a species of stone called Port
land stone, that is soft when first taken out
of the quarries, and hardens by exposure to
water or air."

" Ah, that is better than wood, certainly ;
why do not they make docks of stone in this
country, Uncle Philip ?"

" Because they are much more expensive
than wooden ones ; but I hope they will be
made of stone before many years, at least in
all our principal cities ; and even in those parts
of the country where they are made of cabbage-
tree wood, stone must be used before a very
great while, for the trees are becoming scarce.

" The tree that I am going to tell you of
now is not properly a native of America, for
it came originally from Persia, which, as you
know, is a large country in Asia ; but it thrives
so well in the Southern States, and has be-
come so abundant, that it may almost be con-
sidered a natural production of the soil. It
is called the Pride of India. You have heard
of it, I dare say, and you may see it by going

TREES OF AMERICA. 169

to green-houseSj where plants and trees are
kept for sale : there is a very fine collection
of curious plants kept by Mr. Thorburn, in
Liberty-street in New- York, and I have no
doubt you would find the Pride of India
there.

" In the streets of Savannah and Charleston
it is as common as poplars are in the northern
cities and towns ; and it grows to a good size,
too ; from thirty to forty feet high, and fifteen
or twenty inches in thickness. The leaves
are of a dark green, small, sharp-ponited, and
notched at the edges, very much like a rose
leaf, in fact ; and they grow upon long stems,
in pairs, that is, one on each side, with a
single leaf at the end ; there are generally
five or seven on each stem : the flowers are
small, somewhat like those of the lilach, and
their smell is delightful. The seeds grow in
small clusters or bunches : they are round,
and of a yellowish colour, and nearly as large
as a cherry. Some birds are very fond of
them, especially red-breasts ; but they have a
stupifying quality, like opium, and after eat-
ing great quantities, the birds are often so over-
come by it that they fall to the ground.
The Pride of India is one of the fastest

0

170 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

growing trees in the worldj and for this
reason, as well as for its beauty, and the
sweetness of its perfume, it is a great favour
ite. But, besides these good qualities, the
wood is valuable : it is of a reddish colour,
quite strong enough to be used in building,
and lasts very well : it is good, too, for fuel :
I have heard that an ointment is made from
the leaves, that is excellent for curing certam
diseases of the skin, but I never saw it tried
myself And now, boys, for the nuts.

" I suppose you think there is hardly any
thing I can tell you about a chestnut more
than you know already ; and I dare say you
have managed to make yourselves pretty
familiar with at least the eatable part of it.
But we will try if we cannot find something
new to say on the subject."

" I dare say you can. Uncle Philip ; all I
know about it is, that the nuts are very good
to eat, and that the trees are split up into
rails for the fences : oh, yes, 1 do know one
thing more; and that is, that the wood
crackles and snaps very much when it is
burning."

" Well, in the first place, then, I will tell
you that the chestnut is a very large tree ;

TREES OF AMERICA. 171

diere was one on Mount JStna that surpassed
all the trees in the world in size : it is said to
have been a hundred and sixty feet round,
and large enough to shelter a hundred men
on horseback under its branches."

" Oh, Uncle Philip, is that true ?"

" I cannot say ; you know where that
mountain is, I suppose ?"

" Yes, sir ; it is a volcano, in the island of
Sicily."

" Very right ; well, I have read of the
great chestnut in several books, and there
Is no reason why we should not believe it, that
I know of."

" I suppose that tree must have been very
oM, Uncle Philip."

" Yes, nobody knows how old ; there is no
account of it that gives any information as to
its age, and the oldest speak of it as having
stood for hundreds of years. The inside of it
was almost all gone, and the trunk, in fact,
consisted only of bark, with a very thin shell
of wood ; for you must know that in chestnut-
trees, the sap circulates in the bark, and as
long as that remains the trees will live, even
after all the wood is decayed and gone, as

172 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

was the case with the great chestnut. It is
the same with willow-trees. In the hollow
trunk of this huge tree there was a sort of
house built, in which were kept refreshments
of various kinds, for travellers who came to
look at it : this house had an oven in it for
roasting the nuts and for other purposes, and
the people who kept it used to supply them-
selves with fuel from the branches of the tree,
and they injured it terribly in this way."

" Oh, that was very ungrateful, Uncle
Philip, and foolish, too ; for I suppose there
would be very few people to buy of them if rt
was not for the tree, and yet they were de-
stroying it all the time. Is the great chestnut
standing yet. Uncle Philip ?"

" I believe the ruins of it are yet to be seen ;
but I have heard that it is not much resorted
to now, and indeed there is no mention of it
in several books of tra-vels to that part of the
world, which I have read within the last two
or three years. There are several other large
chestnuts, however, upon Mount -^tna;
some of them as many as seventy-five feet
round ; but I have never heard of any that
came near the Chestnut of the Hundred
Horses, as the great one, was called."

TREES OF AMERICA. 173

" I suppose there must be something in the
soil there very good for the trees, since they
grow so large."

"YeSj chestnuts love the sides of moun-
tains, and a climate that is neither very hot
in summer, nor very cool in winter; the
largest in this country are found in the hilly
parts of North Carolina and Virginia : I have
seen them there fifteen or sixteen feet in cir-
cumference, and more than a hundred feet
high. I have read of one in France that
is supposed to be a thousand years old ; in a
book written six hundred years ago it is called
the great chestnut^ and it is still sound, and
bears nuts every year : it is ten feet in di-
ameter. There is another in England four-
teen feet thick, which is also believed to be
nearly a thousand years old. But it is time
for us now to look at the leaves and the wood.
You have noticed the leaves, I dare say ; but
in case you have not, we will pluck one ; you
see that it is long and narrow, and pointed at
both ends, like the leaf of the peach-tree, only
a great deal -larger. The peach-leaf, you
know, is not more than two inches long,
whereas, the chestnut is seven or eight, and

iTl CONVERSATIONS ON THE

about two inches wide, with very large, deep,
sharp-pointed teeth, and ribs running all
along from the stem in the centre to the
edges. The flowers are very small, and grow
in long slender bunches or stalks, somewhat
like the seeds of the plantain that people give
to birds ; they are whitish, and have an un-
pleasant smell. The fruit I suppose you can
describe to me."

" Oh, you mean the nuts. Uncle Philip ;
they are very nice raw, and boiled, too, and I
have heard that they are good roasted, but I
never tried them that way. They grow two
together in a large thick husk, covered all
over with sharp stiff prickles, standing as
thick as they can ; they hurt us sometimes
when we take them up in our hands." .

" I see you understand them very well :
the wood of the chestnut is strong and elastic,
and bears exposure to changes of dryness and
damp remarkably well, and this makes it a
very good material for posts and fences : I
have heard it said that chestnut rails well
seasoned will last nearly fifty years : chest*
nut-wood makes very good shingles, too,
but they are apt to warp ; it is also used for
staves for flour-barrels, and sugar-barrels

TREES OF Ar4 ERICA. 175

but it is not compact enough for liquor-barrels :
it is a great deal used for fuel, but it makes
an unpleasant fire, on account of its snapping
so much : the charcoal made from it, however,
is excellent.''

" Uncle Philipj what is the reason of that
snapping, do you know, sir ?"

" I know, but I am not sure that I can
make you understand it : chestnut-wood you
know, is very porous, that is, it has little
holes and cracks in every part of it, and is
not close and solid, like locust or cherry-wood :
well, these little holes are full of air, and it is
one of the properties of air to expand or swell
when it is exposed to heat : you can satisfy
yourselves about this if you like, by blowing
air into a bladder until it is almost full and
tight, then tie the neck of it and lay it before
a fire, and you will see it swell till it is
perfectly full and hard ; and then if you
sprinkle cold water on it, or take it away from
the fire and let it cool, it will shrink again to
the same size it was before. Just so it is with
the air in the chestnut, v/hen the wood is put
on the fire ; the air that is confined in the
pores begins to swell, and it swells and swells
till at last it bursts open the place in which

176 CONVERSATIONS ON THP

it is shut up, and so makes the snapping and
cracking you hear. Do you understand this ?

" Yes, I believe so, Uncle Phihp ; but I
should like to try that about the bladder.'*

" Well, do ; it is very easy : and in the
mean time I will tell you about a very pretty
variety of the chestnut.

" Do you remember that in our first con-
versation, I mentioned a nut that grows in
the Southern States, called the chincapin ?
If you do, you will no doubt remember, too,
that I told you it was a species of chestnut^
and that the nuts were exceedingly good.*'

" Oh, yes, Uncle Philip, we remember."

"In appearance, the chincapin is almost
exactly a chestnut in miniature. In Dela-
ware and Maryland, it seldom grows more
than seven or eight feet high ; and farther
south, where it is largest, it never exceeds
twenty or thirty : the leaves are exactly like
the leaves of the chestnut, only that they are
not more than half as large, and are whitish
on the under side ; the flowers, too, are just
the same, and so ara the nuts, except that
they are convex, or rounded on both sides,
whereas, the chestnut, you know, is flat on
one side, and convex on the other : they are

TREES OF AMERICA. 177

considerably smaller, too, and so, of course,
are the husks in which they are wrapped up :
the taste of the nuts is very pleasant, and I
never saw a little boy yet, or girl either, that
did not like them.

" Uncle Philip, I should like to go into some
of the Southern States, on purpose to taste
those chincapins ; I have a suspicion that
they must be uncommonly nice."

"I hope you may go there one of these
days, my child, when you are older ,* but I
trust it will be for something better and more
important than to eat chincapins. The great
object of travelling is to learn and improve
the mind, and not merely to gratify the appe-
tites. But to come back to our chincapin-
trees.

" The wood is finer-grained, heavier, more
compact, and lasts longer than the chestnut ;
it is used for posts when trees large enough
can be got : the small branches are straight,
and very tough, and at the south, where the
red birch is not common, the twigs of the
chincapin are always used by the teachers of
schools to keep naughty boys in order. So
you sec that it is very useful. And now we
have done with the chestnuts,"

78 CONVERSATIONS.

" Oh, Uncle Philip, I hope you have some
more nuts to talk about ; nuts are such nice
things."

" We will see, the next time you come to
me : if you are good children, I dare say I can
find something pleasant to tell you ; but I
think we have had enough for to-day ; and
so good night, my dear little scholars ; run
away home and get your suppers, and do not
forget every thing I have told you."

" We will remember it all if we can. Good
night, Uncle Philip."

LIBRARY

The Beech.

CONVERSATION VII.

Uncle Philip describes to the Children the
virtues of Beech-nuts, and of Ash-trees ;
also of the Mulberrp-tree, on the Leaves of
which Silk-worms feed ; he tells them a
Story, too, of a Poet, and how Willows loere
first brought into England by rneans of a
Basket of Figs.

" How do you do, Uncle Philip ? We have
come to hear you tell us something more about
the trees, if you are at leisure to talk to us."

" Very well, boys ; you know I am always
glad to see you. You have been nuttingi
I see ; here are hazel-nuts, and chestnuts, and
black walnuts ; and what are those you have
in the basket ?"

" Beech-nuts, Uncle Philip."

" Oh, beech-nuts are they ! well then, sit
down and eat them, and I'll tell you some-
thing about the trees on which they grow.

182 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

" You must know that there are two kinds
of beech that are found in this country ; the
red and the white. These names are given
them on account of the colour of the wood.
The white beech is the kind that you know ;
the red only grows in Canada and the north-
eastern parts of the United States ; in Maine
and New-Hampshire it is one of the most
common of all trees ; but farther south it is
almost unknown. The red beech is a very
handsome tree ; its general height is sixty or
seventy feet, but I have seen it nearly a hun-
dred. The trunk is almost always straight,
and rather slender for its height ; and the
branches are very thick and spreading, and
full of leaves, so that the top, or branching
part, is very spacious. The leaves are of a
beautiful, brilliant green, notched at the edges
with sharp even teeth ; they are handsomely
shaped, and about three inches long, and one
and a half wide. I suppose you can tell me
something about the fruit ; at least you can
describe the fruit of the white beech, and I
will tell you wherein the other kind differs
from it."

" The fruit is the same as the nuts, is it not,
Uncle Philip? They grow two of them

TREES OF AMERICA. 183

together in a brown husk, about as big as a
hickory nut, and covered with little sharp
prickles : this husk, when it is ripe, splits into
four parts and lets out the nuts. Here are
some of the nuts. Uncle Philip : you see they
are three-cornered and sharp pointed, and not
near as large as a chestnut. The shell is brown,
like the shell of a chestnut, but a great deal
thinner ; they are very good to eat, and taste
something like a butternut."

" Very well, my dear ; now the nut of the
red beech is very much the same, but sharper
and larger ; and the husk is thicker and has
more prickles. But the greatest diiference
between the two kinds is in the wood ; that
of the white beech is white, and not very good,
although the bark is used in tanning ; but the
wood of the red beech is strong, tough, and
compact, and is employed for a great variety
of purposes. In some parts of the country it
is used in ship-buildmg ; but it is more gene-
rally esteemed for making lasts for shoe-
makers, and the handles of planes and other
carpenters' tools. If properly seasoned, and
not exposed to changes of wet and dry, it lasts
a very long time ; and in Europe, where there
are not so many trees that furnish durable

184 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

wood as there are in America, beech:VVOod is
put to a great variety of uses : there they
make it into tables, and bedsteads, and other
furniture ; into screws, and rollers, and dishes,
and corn-shovels ; into wheels, and oars, and
a great many other things for which we prefer
ash or hickory. A great deal of it is burnt,
too, to make potashes.

" You remember that I told you before
about hedges ; well, in some parts of Europe
they make the hedges of young beeches, placed
seven or eight inches apart, and bent so as to
cross each other ; and very solid and elegant
they are too ; far better than any fence in the
world.

" But these are not all the uses of beech-
trees ; you know I told you before that the
bark is used for tanning : that is where oaks
are scarce ; and besides this, an excellent
oil is got from the nuts, almost as good as the
olive oil. In some parts of France vast quan-
tities of the nuts are gathered every year for
this purpose. They gather them as soon as
they are ripe, and spread them out in garrets
or barns to dry ; as soon as they are quite
dried, they are ground into a paste with a very
little water ; then the paste is put into sacks.

TREES OF AMERICA. 185

and pressed very slowly, and the oil is drawn
off into casks, and left for several months to
settle and become fine ; at the end of about
six months it is fit to use, but it improves by-
age, and keeps longer and better than any
other kind. In some parts of France they
make coffee, too, of beech-nuts ; they roast
them just as we do the real coffee, and I have
heard that one could scarcely tell the dif-
ference."

" Oh, what a comfort that must be for poor
people who cannot afford to buy real coffee !"

" Yes, I dare say it is ; and the French
people in general are very fond of coffee.
There is another tree that bears nuts very
much like those of t?ie beech, only they are a
great deal smaller ; not as large as the pip of
an apple. It is called the hornbeam, and it
grows in all parts of the United States, but
most abundantly in the Southern. It is a
small tree, seldom growing more than twelve
or fifteen feet high ; the leaves are exactly like
beech-leaves, but not half as large, and the
nuts, instead of being shut up in a husk, grow-
in bunches of small leaves that hang from the
ends of the branches ; these little bunches re-
main on the tree long after the other leaves

p

186 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

have fallen to the ground. The bark is
smooth and spotted with white ; the wood is
strong, and fine, and elastic, but too small to
be of any use, except for making hoops.
There is another kind of hornbeam, called iron-
wood ; this kind is much larger than the other,
being sometimes, though not often, found
thirty, and even forty feet high, and never
less than eighteen or twenty. The leaves
are larger and broader than those of the horn-
beam, and the bunches that contain the seeds
or nuts are red, and grow in clusters like hops.
The wood is exceedingly hard, compact, and
heavy, and perfectly white, but hardly ever
large enough to be much used : it is generally
made into mallets, and the small parts of mill

machinery, in which great strength and tough-
ness are required.

" You remember the sweet gum that I told

you of some time ago. Now I have another

gum to describe to you ; at least it is called

black gum, and sometimes sour gum, but it is

not at all like the other gum-tree, and, indeed,

I cannot imagine why it has got the name, for

it produces no resinous fluid. It properly

belongs to a class that has several varieties,

and the proper name of whicli is the tupelo."

TREES OF AMERICA. 187

" The tupelo, Uncle Philip ! Then, I sup.
pose, it does not grow anywhere near here,
for I never heard of such a tree."

" No ; the tupeloes are properly southern
trees, though some of them are found in New-
York and JS^ew- Jersey. The variety called
the black gum is a fine tree, sixty or seventy
feet high, but very slender : and it has one
remarkable peculiarity ; the trunk is almost
always found to be twice as large close to the
ground as it is a foot higher ; it diminishes
in size very rapidly to the height of twelve or
fourteen inches, and then tapers up gradually
like any other tree, so that it spreads out at
the bottom, like a sugar-loaf The leaves are
five or six inches long, oval-shaped, smooth
at the edges, of a shining green on the upper
side, and whitish on the under ; they grow
on slender red stems. The flo^vvers are very
small, and grow in bunches : the fruit is oval,
of a deep blue colour, and something like a
whortleberry, only longer and not as round ;
it has in it a stone like a plum-stone, and
always grows in pairs. The bark is white,
and the wood yellow, and fine-grained. It is
not liable to split, and for this reason is much

188 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

used for the naves, or hubs, of wheels, and
for hatters' blocks, and some parts of mill- work.
" The tupelo is almost precisely the same
with the black gum, except that it is smaller
and more comxmon, especially in Nev/- Jersey
and Pennsylvania. It is sometimes called sour
gum, and sometimes peperidge. The trunk
is all of the same size from the base to the
branches, and the bark of the full grown trees
is remarkable, from being broken up into
figures of six sides, that are often quite regular
in shape. The leaves, the flowers, and the
fruit are exactly like those of the black gum ;
the taste of the fruit is slightly bitter, yet the
birds eat it greedily, particularly the red-
breasts. The wood is not very hard, but, like
the black gum, it has a remarkable peculiarity
in the fibres of which it is composed ; in most
other kinds of wood these fibres are straight,
and lie side by side, so that they split and
come apart without much difficulty; but in
the tupelo and the black gum they lie cross-
ing each other, and are so twisted, or rather
braided, together, that it is almost im-
possible to split them asunder. This pecu-
harity makes the wood very excellent for cer-
tain purposes : where it has to resist great

TREES OF AMERICA.. 189

pressure, as in the naves of wheels, and the
side-boards and bottoms of carts and heavy-
wagons. It makes very good fires, too, for it
burns slowly, and gives out a great deal of
heat.

*'In Georgia, and South. Carolina, and Flori-
da, there is another kind of tupelo, called the
large tupelo, and sometimes the wild olive. It
is often seen eighty feet high, but the trunk is
very slender, except at the ground, for this kind
has the remarkable swelling I told you of as be-
longing to the black gum. Close to the ground
the trunk is often found seven oreight feet thick ;
then it diminishes rapidly, until at the height
of four or five feet it is not more than eigh-
teen or twenty inches in diameter, and it
continues of this size to the height of twenty-
five or thirty feet."

" Uncle Philip, that must give the trees a
very odd appearance. What is the cause of
it, do you know, sir ?"

" No, I do not ; some people have supposed
that it was owing to the dampness of the soil ;
but if this were the case, the same thing
would be found in other kinds of trees ; but
it is not, and is peculiar to the tupeloes and
the cypress only. The leaves of the large

190 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

tupelo are five or six inches long, and about
three inches wide ; they are oval-shaped and
the edges are cut into three or four scallops
of different shapes and sizes, with sharp points
between them. The fruit is shaped some-
thing like a thimble, but more pointed at the
end, and very much of the same size : it is
of a deep blue, and when bruised in water
gives out a fine purple juice that may be used
in dying ; the stone is large and rough ; the
wood is too soft to be applied to any useful
purpose.

" There is another kind of tupelo, called
the sour tupelo, that grows in Georgia and
Florida ; some call it the wild lime. It is a
very small tree, but the leaves are as long as
those of the large tupelo ; they are not so
wide, however, nor of so dark a green. The
fruit is shaped like that of the large tupelo,
but is of a light red, and exceedingly sour,
and the stone is pointed at both ends. The
wood is soft and useless."

" Uncle Philip, will you not tell us about
some useful trees, if you please ? All these
that you have just been talking about, except
the beeches, seem to be good for nothing."

" Have a little patience, my dear child, and

TREES OF AMERICA. 191

you shall soon hear of useful trees, very
useful trees : but first of all, I ha\re two kinds
of nettle-trees to describe to you. One is
called the American nettle-tree ; it grows in
the Middle States, but is not very common
anywhere. It is tall, but remarkably slender,
for the trunk of a tree eighty feet high is
scarcely ever seen more than a foot and a
half thick : the leaves are about three inches
long, and very sharp-pointed, and notched at
the edges : the flowers are white, and very
small ; and the fruit is a red berry, much like
that of the holly, only that it does not grow
in bunches : the wood is dark-brown, hard,
and tough, but I believe it is not used for any
particular purpose, probably because it is so
scarce."

" Uncle Philip, why is it called nettle-tree ?
are there nettles on it ?"

" No ; and I do not know whence it has
its name, any more than the other kind, which
is called hack-berry. This is a western tree,
and a very fine one, too ; the trunk is per-
fectly straight, and very slender : the leaves
are about six inches long, and remarkable for
their colour, which is a dusky green, almost
black ; and the fruit is of the same size as

192 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

that of the nettle, but perfectly black when it
is ripe : the wood is fine and compact, and
quite white when fresh cut ; but it is too Hght
and soft to be much used. Tlie Indians make
baskets of the young" branches. Farmers in
the western country prefer hack-berry wood
for fences, on account of its sphtting very
easily. And now for some useful trees.

" First let me tell you about the mulberry."

" Oh, Uncle Philip, I know the mulberry ;
we have one in our garden. The berrjes are
white, and very sweet, and shaped like black-
berries. Father says that silk- worms feed on
the leaves ; and silk, we know, is very useful
and valuable."

" Yes ; so valuable that the quantity con-
sumed every year, in the United States alone,
is worth a great many hundred thousand
dollars. But the mulberry that you have in
your garden is a European tree ; that is the
white mulberry, and the only kind that
grows wild in the United States is the red."

" And will silk-worms eat the leaves of the
red kind too, Uncle Philip ?"

" No, only the white ; and therefore the
red kind is not as valuable as the other ; but
still it is a quite useful tree. It is large, and

TREES OF AMERICA. 193

the wood is both handsome aud strong, and
almost as durable as the locust. It makes
excellent ship-timber, and would be very
much used in ship-building if its growth was
not so slow ; in this respect the locust is much
to be preferred. The leaves are very large,
thick, and tough, almost roand, of a dark
green, and different from the leaves of most
other trees, in being rough and wrinkled on
the surface, somewhat like the leaf of a cab-
bage. The fruit is exactly like the fruit of
the white mulberry in size and taste, but it is
purple. It is pleasant, but too sweet to eat
much at a time. The leaves of the white
mulberry are thin and tender, and the silk-
worms will eat nothing else. White mul-
berries grow readily in all parts of the
United States, and they are very much culti-
vated ; within the last ten or twelve years the
business of raising silK-worms and preparing
the silk, has begyn to be quite extensive and
profitable, but it will be a long time before
we shall make enough to supply our own
wants."

" Where do we get silk. Uncle Philip ?"
"Principally from France, and Italy, and
from China. The worms require a great deal

194 V oNVERSATiONS ON THE

of care and attention, and it is only in coun-
tries where wa^es are very low, and where
there are a great many more people than can
find employment in cultivating the ground,
that it is worth while to take all the pains
and bestow all the time required in raising
them. Now in China and Italy the people
are much more numerous than in the United
States ; that is, in comparison with the extent
of the countries-: and in the United States
there are many other kinds of occupation
more profitable than raising silk-worms ; and
therefore we must be content to get most of
our silk from others, and give our fiour and
cotton, and sugar, and rice in exchange for it,
until our population is much greater than it
is now."

" Uncle Philip, it seems to me very won-
derful that different trees should be useful in
so many different ways. In some, the wood
is useful; in others the bark, in others the
roots, in others again the fruit, and now you
have told us about one that is valuable only
on account of the leaves ; what curious thinsfs
trees are !"

" Yes, indeed ; there is no end or limit to
God's goodness, or to the number of things

TREES OF AMERICA. 196

He has provided for our comforts and necessi-
ties. I can tell you of another tree that is
of use onlv in its leaves. It is called the
sweet-leafj and is common in the Southern
and Western States, particularly in those
parts where the soil is very poor and sandy,
and produces no grass : the leaves of the
sweet-leaf supply its place. They have a
sugary taste, and the horses and cattle devour
them very eagerly. Besides this, when they
are dry, they make a beautiful yellow die,
and the country people are glad to get them
to colour their cotton and wool. But now I
will tell you about some trees that are far
more useful. The ashes.

" Except the oak, there is probably no tree
either in Europe or America more extensively
useful than the ash. The principal qualities
of the wood are strength and toughness.
There are a great many varieties, but the
dilferences between many of them are so
slight as not to be worth noticing, and there-
fore I shall only describe to you the six prin-
cipal kinds. The first and best of them all
is the white ash; this kind prefers a cold
climate, and is common in the Northern
States and Canada ; it has its name from

196 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

the colour of the bark, which is quite white.
Its height is from sixty to eighty feet, and its
thickness from one and a half to three ; the
trunk is perfectly straight, and seldom begins
to branch out within less than forty feet of
the ground. The leaves are about three
inches long, oval-shaped, with smooth edges,
and a soft delicate surface ; the upper side is
green, and the under side whitish ; but this
is not the case with the other kinds of
ash. The seeds are curious ; they resemble
the pod of a pea, but they are not flat the
whole of their length ; about half-way they
are round, after that they begin to flatten, and
at the end they are quite flat like the blade
of a knife; they are about two inches and a
half long : I cannot think of any thing more
like them in shape than a paddle. The round
part is green, and the flat part straw-coloured ;
and they hang together in bunches of three,
four, and five. The wood is reddish, very
strong, supple, and tough ; and the uses to
which it is put are numerous and very differ-
ent. The shafts of gigs and carriages are
almost always made of white ash ; in New-
York and Philadelphia it is used for the
frames of carriages, and for the felloes or rims

TREES OF AMERICA. 197

of wheels, and for the runners of sleighs ; in
Maine, for the backs of chairs, for scythe and
rake handles, hoops, and staves, for making
some parts of the frames of ships, and for
ship-blocks ; and, above all, for oars and hand-
spikes, for making which, it is preferred to all
orts of wood except hickory : in short, for all
purposes which require strong, elastic, tough,
and durable wood, the white ash comes into
use, and there is no other tree that is so gen-
eral a favourite with the wheelwright, the
cabinet-maker, and the carpenter. In addi-
tion to its other good qualities, it grows very
fast.

" The red ash is much like the white, except
that the leaves are not more than half as
large, and that their under surface is covered
with thick down, which turns red as autumn
approaches ; the wood, too, is of a brighter
red, and the seeds are not as long. This
kind is most common in the Middle States,
and as far south as Virginia. The wood is
very nearly as good and as much used as thai
of the white ash.

" The green ash grows in the western parts
of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and in Ohio.
It is much smaller than either the white oi

198 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

the red, for its general height is only thirty
or forty feet. It has its name from the bril-
liant green of its leaves, and from their upper
and under sides being both of the same colour,
which is very seldom the case in trees. The
seeds are quite small, not half as large as
those of the white, but of the same shape.
The wood is of very good quality, but not so
much used as the other kinds, from its being
so much smaller.

" The black ash, like the white, loves a
cold climate, and is found in greatest abun-
dance in Canada, and the most northern parts
of the United States : in size, too, it is like the
white ash ; but the leaves are smaller, and
of a deeper green ; on the under side they are
covered with red down : the seeds are shorter
and are flat throughout their whole length: this
kind has its name from the colour of the bark
which is much darker than any of the others.
The wood is brown, very tough, and more
elastic or springy than the white ; but it does
not last as long, and is much less used in car-
penters' work : in Maine it is chiefly employed
for making hoops and potashes : it is some-
times found handsomely mottled and veined,
and is made up into furniture. But it is not

TREES OF AMERICA. 199

as much valued as the white for any purpose
except making potashes.

" The blue ash is found only in Tennessee,
Kentucky, and the southern parts of Ohio.
The leaves are notched at the edges, which
is not the case with the other kinds: the
seeds are flat in every part : the wood is ex-
cellent, and very much used, particularly in
the frames and flooring of houses : a blue
die is obtained from the bark ; and it is said
that milk in which the leaves have been boiled
is a certain cure for the bite of the rattlesnake ;
but I never tried it, and I hope none of you
may ever have occasion to make trial of its
virtues.

"The last kind I shall mention is the
Carolinian ash, which is only found in the
Southern States. It is much smaller than the
others, for it hardly ever grows more than
thirty feet high. The leaves are large, almost
round, dark green, and notched at the edges ;
and the seeds, unlike those of the other kinds,
are almost as broad as they are long: the
wood is too small to be of much service, but it
is of very good quality.

" Now, my dears, tell me, do you know a
willow-tree when you see it ?"

200 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

'" To be sure we do, Uncle Philip : willows
are as common as poplars ; they almost al-
ways grow in water, or by the sides of ponds
and little streams."

" Ay, you mean the weeping willow, and
a very beautiful tree it is, too : but the weep-
ing willow, common as it is, is not a native
of the United States ; we had it from England,
and the English got it, I believe, from Turkey
or Persia. There is a story told about the
way in which the weeping willow was first
brought to England, v/hich is curious enough,
but I cannot say v/hether it is true or not.
You must know that about a hundred years
ago, there lived in England a very celebrated
poet, whose name was Pope, and who was
fond of trees and gardens. The story goes
that he received once from a friend who had
gone to Turkey a basket or hamper of figs
as a present ; that he found upon one of the
twigs of which the hamper was made a bud,
which he planted in his garden ; the bud
sprouted and grew, and in the course of a few
years became a fine weeping willow ; and
this, it is said, was the first ever seen in that
country."

" How pleased Mr. Pope must have been,

TREES OF AMERICA. 201

Uncle Philip, when he found his bud turned
into a beautiful tree !"

" Yes, I dare say he was ; and remember
that for all the pleasure it gave him he was
indebted to observation : many people would
never have perceived the bud at all, in their
eagerness to get at the figs ; and many others
who might have seen it, would not have
noticed it, but left it to be burnt or otherwise
destroyed. Mr. Pope made use of his eyes
and thought, and had a fine tree for his
pains."

" But, Uncle Philip, do you think that a
bud would live so long after the branch on
which it grew was cut from the tree ?"

" Why, my dear, I must say that I think it
rather doubtful ; still, however, it is possible,
and we know that the buds and branches of
trees will sometimes sprout a very long time
after they have been cut. But it is time for
us to come back to our willows.

" Although the weeping willow is not a
native of the United States, there are a great
many kinds of willow that do grow naturally
in this country ; but none of them are either
large or useful. In Europe there is a species
of willow, different from the weeping willow,

a

202 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

from the long slender branches of which
baskets are made ; but the branches of the
American, willows are too brittle."

"But, Uncle Philip, I have seen a great
many baskets at the basket-shops in New-
York, that were made of small round branches
like willow ; did they come from England T^

" Oh no ; the European willow has been
introduced into the United States as well as
the weeping willow, and it is almost as
common here as in Europe. It is larger, and
has tougher branches than our native wil-
low. The kind that comes nearest to the
European is what we call the black willow :
it grows from twenty to thirty feet high, and
is common enough in the Middle and Western
States : the leaves are very much like those
of the weeping willow, but the branches do
not hanof. Both sides of the leaf are of the
same colour. The country people sometimes
make a decoction from the roots, which is
extremely bitter, and said to be a good purl
fier of the blood ; no other use is made of the
black willow except to make charcoal for
gunpowder. Another kind is called the shi-
ning willow, on account of the brilliancy of
the leaves, which are very large ; sometimes

IREES OF AMERICA. 203

as many as four inches long, and two broad,
whereas, you know, the leaves of all the other
kinds are very narrow and slender. Baskets
are sometimes made of the branches of this
kind, but they are not as good as the branches
of the European willow."

" After all, then. Uncle Philip, it seems to
me that the willow is not a very useful tree."

" No ; but it grows fast, and is so hand-
some, particularly the weeping willow, with
its long, slender, drooping branches waving
about in the wind, that it is a great favourite
with everybody. And now, my dears, I think
we have had trees enough for to-day ; the
next time you come I will tell you about the
elms and three or four other trees : after that,
we shall have nothing left but the different
kinds of pine and cedar, a very large family :
and when we have finished them we shall
have done with the trees of the United
States."

" Uncle Philip, before we go will you have
the goodness to tell me one thing ? I have
often seen weeping willows carved upon tombs
and grave-stones ; why is that done, do you
know, sir ?"

" It is for the same reason that the name

204 CONVERSATIONS.

of weeping willow has been given to it,
When people are very much afflicted, they
droop, and seem to be, as it were, Aveighed
down with sorrow: the branches of the
weeping willow hang drooping towards the
ground ; and their appearance, to a fanciful
eye, has something of the character of mourn-
ing ; and therefore the tree is represented upon
tomb-stones as an emblem of the grief occa*
sioned bv the death of relatives or friends,'

The White Pine.

CONYERSATION VIII.

Uncle Philip and his little Friends continue
their' Conversation about Trees; he tells
them of the different kinds of Elm, arid
Lime, and of the num>erous FaTnily of the
Pines ; and of a vast Trough that was made
once in Sivitzerland, reaching from the top
of a Mountain to a Lake 7iine miles dis
tant.

" Uncle Philip, we have come to claiip
your promise about the elms, if you please."

" Certainly, my dear children ; you know
that nothing pleases me more than telling- you
whatever I know that is useful. In Europe, th
elm is considered one of the most valuabl
trees of the forest : second only to the oak
which it almost equals in size. In France,
there are a few very old elms that were planted
nearly three hundred years ago, and are now
nearly ten feet thick, and a hundred feet high ;
but these are uncommonly large. The general

208 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

height is about seventy feet, with a thick-
ness of two and a half or three. The wood
is neither as tough as the oak, nor as elastic
as the ash : but it is still very tough, and less
apt to split than either. In France, it is more
generally used for making the carriages of
guns, or cannon, than for any other purpose ;
cannon, you know, are exceedingly heavy,
and the carriages must be very strong, and
able to bear a great deal of rough usage ; no
wood is found so proper as the elm : and they
take a great deal of pains in choosing and
seasoning the trees cut down for the purpose :
I have been told that they keep them seven
or eight years under sheds before they use
them, and turn them two or three times a
year, so that they may become perfectly dry.
The wood makes excellent ship-blocks too.
In England they use it for wheels, and for
the wood-work of large machinery ; and in
some parts of the country, where the elms are
abundant, and coal scarce, they burn it, and
very excellent fuel it makes. The bark is
tough and stringy, and may be made into
good ropes.

" In the United States there are three kinds
of elm. The largest is called the white elm

TREES OF AMERICA. 209

and grows in every part of North America ;
the leaves are four or five inches long, and
very beautiful, from their regular shape, and
the evenness of the teeth into which the edges
are notched; the flowers are small, and grow
in handsome purple clusters ; the seeds are
shaped something like pumpion-seeds, and
consist of a sort of brown pip with a green
fringe round it, and they hang in bunches of
three or four together. The white elm is a
large tree, sometimes four feet thick, and very
lofty ; the trunk is p erfectly straight, and
shoots up thirty or forty feet before it begins
to divide into branches. There is one pecu-
liarity about the white elm that I have not
noticed in any other tree ; I scarcely ever
saw one that had not two of its lowest
branches growing downwards towards the
ground. The arrangement of the branches
generally in the white elm is very striking
and beautiful. The bark is white, tender,
and deeply grooved or furrowed. The wood
is dark brown, but is neither as hard nor as
tough as the European elm. It is used for
making coach-wheels and the keels of ships.
The bark, soaked in water and made supple

R

210 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

by pounding, is used in some parts of the
country for the seats of chairs.

'• Another kind is the red, or, as some call it,
the sHppery ehn."

" Oh, we know that, Uncle Philip ; the bark
is good to eat."

" Yes ; it is used by physicians too : by
boiling it in water they make a thin jelly,
very like flax-seed tea, that is good for colds and
fevers. It is thought to be nourishing, and is
often given to sick people, instead of arrow-
root. The red elm is smaller than the white,
but the wood is stronger, and more durable.
The leaves are larger, thicker, and rougher ;
the seeds are larger and rounder. The bark
is brown on the outside, and of a reddish
white on the inside. The wood is chiefly
used for ship-blocks, and the timbers of boats :
it makes excellent rails, too : but it is not very
common.

" The other kind of elm grows only in the
Southern States, and is there called the
wahoo ; an Indian name, of which I do not
know the meaning. It is a small tree, seldom
more than thirty feet high, and nine or ten
inches thick. The seeds and leaves are very
much like those of the white elm but not

TREES OF AMERICA. 211

near as large ; but the most curious thing
about it is a sort of fungous wing, like what
boys call punk, that grows on each side of the
branches through their whole length : it is of
a pale brown, and has a very singular ap-
pearance."

" What makes it, Uncle Philip ? What is
it for r

" I do not know, my dear ; some people
suppose that it is caused by insects that lay
their eggs in the bark ; but I suspect that it
grows naturally. What the use of it is I have
not the least idea.

" There is another tree resembling one of
the species of European elm, that is some-
times found in the Southern States ; but it is
very scarce, and has no common name.
Botanists call it the planer-tree. The leaves
are quite small, of a lively green, and shaped
somewhat like those of the European elm ;
but the seeds are like hops, and not flat, like
the seeds of the elms. The wood is very
hard and strong, but too small and too scarce
to be made any use of.

" I have one more class of trees to tell you of
before we come to the numerous family of the
pines ; but it consists of only three varieties.

212 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

The general name of this class is lime ; and the
three varieties are called the American lime,
or bass-wood, the white, and the downy-lime."

" Uncle Philip, does the sour lime that they
sell at the confectioners' — that they make
lemonade of; does that grow on either of
these ?"

" No ; that is a species of lemon, and grows
in the West Indies and other hot countries.
The limes that I am going to tell you about
are very different. The American lime is a
fine tall tree, sometimes as many as eighty
feet high, and very straight. The leaves are
heart-shaped, and very like the leaves of the
common Lombardy poplar, only smaller ; but
the most curious thing about it is the way in
which the flowers and seeds grow. Besides
the common leaf which hangs from a stem
like the leaves of other trees, there is a long,
very narrow leaf, that springs directly from
the branches ; from the centre of this narrow
leaf grows a long stem, which splits into three
towards the end, and the flowers, which are
pale yellow and quite pretty, hang at the ends
of these in small clusters ; and after the
flowers are gone, the seeds come in their
places : they are little gray balls, much like

TREES OF AMERICA. 213

peas, but harder. The flowers are said to
have some good medicinal properties. The
bark is remarkably thick, and so fibrous or
stringy that it can be made into ropes like
hemp. In some parts of Europe, well-ropes
are made of it. The wood is white and soft,
and works very easily: it is mostly used by
carvers in wood. Cabinet-makers prefer it
for making drawers, and such things ; they
generally call it bass-wood. Common wooden
chairs are made of it, too, as are the little wooden
toys that are made for children, such as images
of cows, and horses, and monkeys ; you have
seen them, I dare say.

" The white lime differs from the bass-wood
in size, being only about half as large, and in
its bark, which is silver gray and quite smooth :
the leaves, too, are much larger, and of a
darker green on the upper side •; on the under
side they are almost white : the flowers are
larger, too, and have a very pleasant smell :
in other respects, this kind of lime is exactly
like the other.

" The third kind is called the downy lime,
from the under side of the leaves beins: cov-
ered with a very thick coat of fine soft down
or furze. They are almost round, and pointed

214 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

at the top, and diifer very much in size, ac-
cording to the situation in which the trees
grow : in dry open places, they are not more
than two inches wide, but in cool moist spots
they are twice as large. In general appear-
ancfij the downy lime is not unlike the
American lime or bass-wood, but only about
half the size ; the greatest difference is in the
seeds and flowers ; the flowers are smaller and
whiter, but grow in larger clusters ; and the
seeds grow in clusters often or twelve, instead
of three, as in the other kinds ; but they hang
in the same way, from a long slender stem,
springing out of the middle of a narrow leaf.".

" Uncle Philip, I read once in a book that
matting was made of the bark of the lime-
tree ; but I do not know very well what mat-
ting is."

" It is a kind of thick coarse cloth, some-
times made of rushes, and sometimes, as you
say, of the bark of trees ; and it is chiefly used
for packing some kinds of merchandise ; most
of the hemp and flax that are brought to this
country from Russia is packed in matting
made of lime-bark. If you would like to see
some bass or lime-wood you can by going to
the shoemakers' ; the boards they use to cut

TREES OF AMERICA. 216

their leather on are ahiiost always made of
this wood ; they like it because it is soft, and
does not blunt their knives. But its greatest
use is for all kinds of ornamental carving.
Sugar may be made from the sap, but in very
small quantities. I have only to tell you
that the American lime abounds in the
northern, the white lime in the middle, and
the downy lime in the southern sections of the
United States. And now we are ready to turn
our attention to the long list of the pines, and
spruces, and cedars."

" Uncle Philip, I know that there are a great
many different names given to various kinds
of pine, and spruce, and hemlock, and fir, and
cedar ; and I suppose they are in fact all
different kinds of trees : but some of them are
so much alike that I should think they might
be arranged in classes, like the magnolias and
the birches ; could they not, Uncle Philip ?"

" Yes ; and so they are : all these trees are
ever-greens, and they all have some very
strong general features of resemblance ; but
still they are not all the same kind of trees,
and they are divided into three great classes,
each including several species ; these are the
pines, the spruces, and the cedars : I will first

216 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

try to make you understand the general dis
tinctions between them, and then go on to
describe the principal varieties of each.

" In the first place, then, the pines differ
from the others chiefly in the leaves, which
are long and slender, like large hairs, or
pieces of wire, and mostly grow in bunches,
from the ends of the branches, just as though
a number of them were tied together ; you
have seen what is called the white pine very
often, I am sure, for it is one of the Christmas
greens ; and you have noticed the leaves,
sometimes five or six inches long, dark green,
and about as thick as a knitting-needle : well,
all the pines have the same kind of leaves,
only some of them are not quite as long. And
whenever you see a tree with such leaves on
it, you may be sure that it is a pine of some
sort or other.

" The leaves of the spruces, on the contrary,
are very short, not more than half an inch, or
at most two-thirds of an inch long ; and
instead of growing in bunches like the pines,
they stand out all along the sides of the small
branches, like the feathers on a quill, only not
as close together: there is some difference
in the cones or seeds, too, but we will not

TREES OF AMERICA. 217

take notice of that now. The cedars again
have leaves quite different from either of the
others ; the leaves of the pines and spruces,
you know, are smooth and shining ; those of
the cedars are irreo-ular on their surfaces, and
look very much like bits of green twine : this
roughness or irregularity is caused by very
small scales with which they are covered ;
besides, they are not as stiff as the leaves
of the pine or spruce, and each leaf is, in fact,
a small branch, dividing itself and spreading
out, like branches of coral : there are other
differences, too, which we will notice by-
and-by.

" Of all the trees in the world, there are
none as universal as these ever-greens, or
having as many varieties. Go v/here you
will, to any part of the globe, and you will be
sure to find some sort of pine or trees of a
similar kind ; and although the oak, and some
other trees, may be useful in more ways, there
are none that are as much used, or that we
should find it as inconvenient to be deprived
of. All the pines produce a resinous sub-
stance, which is of great use and value for
very many different purposes ; and the wood
is an article of universal consumption ; indeed.

818 CONVKUSATIONS ON THE

for some purposes there is no other kind of
wood that answers so well ; and although no
part of the pine, spruce, or cedar, except the
wood and this resinous substance, is used in
manufactures and the arts, yet they are em-
ployed in such an infinite variety of ways
that we could better spare any other tree in
the world, not even excepting the oak.

" The varieties of pine in different parts of
the world are exceedingly numerous ; in
North America alone, there are ten, most of
which are not to be found anywhere else,
and indeed almost every country seems to
have species peculiar to itself We will begin
with that kind which grows farthest at the
north.

"The first, then, is called the red pine,
from the colour of the bark ; it is most abun-
dant in the neighbourhood of Hudson's Bay,
and the most northern parts of Canada, and
it is seldom found farther south than New-
York. Its general height is seventy or eighty
feet, with a diameter of two feet; and it is
remarkable for having the trunk all of a size
for nearly two-thirds of its length. The
leaves are dark green, about six inches long,
and two are always found growing from one

TREES OF AMERICA. 219

root : the cones are light yellow, and tvvo
inches long: the wood is very heavy, from
being full of resinous matter, or turpentine,
and this makes it last a long time : it is used
chiefly for planks for the decks of ships, and
for pumps ; the reason why it is so good for
these purposes is that it is almost entirely free
from knots."

" Uncle Philip, do they get tar or turpentine
from this kind ?"

" They might ; but there are other kinds,
of which the wood is not so valuable, and
most of the tar, and pitch, and turpentine is
got from them.

" There is another kind that is also found
only in the northern parts of America, and it
is the smallest of all the pines ; it is called the
gray pine, from the colour of the cones ; it is
never more than eight or ten feet high, and
the leaves are only an incl long."

" I suppose it is good for nothing, then,
Uncle Philip ; it must be too small for timber,
and I should think it was hardly worth cut-
ting down for firewood if any thing better
could be got."

" You are right, my dear , and besides, it
is not plentiful anywhere. It is said^ how-

220 CONVERSATIONI^ ON TIIIL

ever, that tea made of the cones boiled in
water is good for colds.

" The next is the white pine ; one of the
most common, and also most valuable of
them all. It is found in great plenty in the
Eastern and Middle States ; but the largest
trees are found in Maine and New-Hampshire,
and the northern parts of New- York : they
have been seen as many as a hundred and
eighty feet high, and seven feet thick ; but in
general the height is from ninety to a hundred
and thirty feet."

" And is it straight and slender, like most
of the pines, Uncle Philip ? If it is, it must
be a very fine tree."

" Yes, both straight and slender ; and this
is one of the best things about it ; for being
very light, the white pines are capital for the
masts and yards of ships, which, you knoAV,
must be very straight. The leaves are of a
lighter green than most of the others, about
four inches Ions:, s^i^d they almost always
grow five together from one root or spot ; a
few of these little bundles of five are scatterec
along the sides of the branches, but at tho
ends they are gathered together in large
bunches, all seeming to grow from one spot.

TREES OF AMERICA. 221

The cones are five inches long, and composed
of thin smooth scales, that stick out fro/n
each other ; these cones always hang down
in the white pine, but in some kinds they
stand up : hke the cones of all the other pines,
they are full of turpentine, and burn very
brightly."

" Oh, I know that right well, Uncle Philip ;
I have picked them up very often to kindle
fires with. They catch as quick as paper or
straw."

" So they do ; and a very pleasant cheerful
blaze they make, too. This pine, and another
kind called the yellow pine, furnish the boards,
and planks, and joists, and beams, and shin
gles that are used in building houses, and
for an infinite variety of other purposes;
you have made little ships and boats, I dare
say, out of pine wood, and you know how
soft and easy it is to cut, and how light it is ;
it is on this account, and from their being so
free from knots, that the white and yellow
pines are so useful : I suppose that two-thirds
at least, of all the houses in the United States
are built altogether of white pine ; and even
in brick and stone-houses, all the beams and
rafters are made of it ; so you may judge

222 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

what a consumption there is of it, and what
a number of trees must have been cut down ;
and besides, you know, there are millions and
millions of feet of pine boards exported every
year to Europe and the West Indies. Then
most of the bridges in the United States are
made of it ; and all the doors nearly ; and
looking-glass frames are made of white pine,
;oo, because it takes gilding so well ; and, in
short, there is no end to the uses made of it."

" Why, Uncle Philip, I should think that
.he whole country would have been cleared
of it by this time, if such vast quantities are
used."

" It is disappearing very fast : a hundred
years ago, the United States were almost
covered with white pines ; and now we have
to go far into the interior for them : in a hun-
dred years more, they will be scarce enough,
I dare say."

"Uncle Philip, it must be a great deal of
trouble to bring such large trees any great
distance ; I cannot think how they can carry
them."

" Well, I can tell you ; in every part of oui
country there are rivers, all running towards
the s<^a ; and you must have observed that aU

TREES OF AMERICA. 223

the large cities are near the places where
these rivers empty themselves into the ocean :
the trees are generally cut down in winter,
and dragged to the nearest river, where they
are all fastened together upon the ice, and made
into rafts ; in the spring, when the ice melts,
these rafts float down the rivers until they
come to the city where they are to be sold, or
sawed up; and that is the way they are
carried. Sometimes there are several thou-
sand trees fastened together in one raft, when
the river is wide enough.

" But before we go any further, I must tell
you of a very wonderful contrivance that was
made by an ingenious man once in Switzer-
land, to convey trees into the Lake of Lucerne.
You must know that in Switzerland there is
a mountain called Mount Pilatus, which is
covered with fine large pine-trees : the trees
were valuable, but as the top of the mountain
was nearly nine miles from the lake, the ex-
pense and trouble of carrying the logs down
to the water were too great, and so the fine
trees were perfectly useless. At last the man
that I told you of, whose name was Rupp,
undertook to make a vast trough extending
from the top of the mountain down to the

224 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

water, so that the logs might shde down ; and
he did it too."

"Oh, Uncle Philip, what a monstrous
trough that must have been ! What did he
make it of?"

" Of trees ; and you may judge of the size
of it when I tell you that it took twenty-five
thousand large pines : it was six feet wide,
four feet deep, and forty-four thousand feet
long ; it had to be brought over rocks and
valleys, and deep chasms ; but Mr. Rupp was
a persevering man, and industrious, too, as
well as ingenious, and he finished it in little
more than a year and a half; then what a
sight it must have been to see the great trees
sliding down into the lake ! The largest and
heaviest went the whole distance in six min-
utes ; they plunged down into the water with
such speed and power that they would go
sometimes a mile before they came up again :
and once when a tree, on its way down,
struck against a knot or some other obstruc-
tion in the bottom of the trough, it flew out
with such force as to strike down great pines
as though they had been struck by a cannon-
ball."

"What a curious contrivance that was,

TREES OF AMERICA. 225

Uncle Philip ; I should Uke to go to Switzer-
land to see it."

"Oh, it is all gone now; Mr. Rupp has
been dead several years, and the trough fell to
ruin, and now there is scarcely a trace left of
it. But let us come back to our pines.

" The kind that is most valuable, after the
white and yellow, is the black or pitch pine.
The wood of the pitch pine is remarkably
knotty, and full of resinous matter ; it is much
inferior in quality to the white and the yellow
pine, and is generally used for coarse work,
such as candle and soap-boxes, and common
packing-cases ; it is also sawed up in some
parts of the country for boards for flooring ;
its greatest consumption, however, is for fuel ;
vast quantities are used on board steamboats,
and by bakers, and brick-makers. Formerly,
when the black pine was much more plentiful
than it is now, great quantities of tar and tur-
pentine used to be got from it in those parts
of the country where it grows ; but it is
rapidly diminishing, and most of the tar and
turpentine made in the United States now is
got from another kind that is very abundant
at the south ; it is called the long-leaved, or
Georgia pitch pine. In the course of twenty

226 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

or thirty years more, I am afraid, the black
pines will be all gone ; the wood is much
dearer now than it was ten years ago."

" And then what will the steamboats do
for fires, Uncle Philip ?"

" Why, they must then burn coal, as they
do in England."

"And when the coal is all gone, Uncle
Philip, what shall we do then?"

" Oh, as for that, I think we need not feel
uneasy; there is coal enough in the United
States to last some thousands of years yet,
a time so far distant, that it need not give us
any concern at present.

'' Of all the pines, the most abundant, ex-
cept the v/hite, is the long-leaved pine, that I
mentioned just now ; it is not found farther
north than Virginia, but from thence all the
way through the Southern States and the
Floridas, you may find it almost every step,
and in many places in this region, you meet
nothing else in the shape of a tree. The leaves
are the largest of any ; they are more than afoot
long, of a beautiful brilliant green, and there
are always three growing together from the
same root: the cones too are enormous;

TREES OF AMERICA. 227

their general length is seven or eight inches,
and in shape and colour they resemble
a huge sweet potato ; the seeds are white
(unlike those of all the other pines, which
are black), and have an agreeable taste : wild
turkeys, and squirrels, and pigs eat them
with every appearance of relish. The wood
is strong, heavy, and full of resinous matter ;
it is moreover fine-grained, and takes a good
polish. In the Southern States it is very ex-
tensively used in building both ships and
houses, and vast quantities of it are consumed
in fencing ; and besides, under the name of
Georgia pitch pine, it is a great article of ex-
portation to the West Indies. Over and above
all this, it is subject to great waste of another
kind, from the destructive attacks of a small
insect which lodges in swarms under the
bark, pierces the body of the tree, and causes
it to die in the course of the year."

" Uncle Philip, what does the insect kill the
tree for ?"

"It feeds upon the wood, or rather upon
the sap. It is from this tree that the tar, and
turpentine, and pitch, and resin are made,
as I told you before : if you like, I will de

228 CONVEUSATIONS ON THE

scribe to you the process by which they are
obtained."

" Oh do, if you please. Uncle Philip ; that
must be very curious.''

" Well, then ; turpentine is simply the sap
of the tree in its natural state, and is obtained
by boring, just the same as the maple sap ;
as it runs from the tree, it is about as thick as
honey, but gets thicker and more sticky after
a little while : it begins to run in March, and
continues until October ; after five or six
years, the tree is abandoned, as no more sap
will run from it. It is calculated that in
general, forty trees will give a barrel of pure
turpentine every year, and about a third
of a barrel of inferior quality, called scrajnngs.
Turpentine, you know, is used for making
soap, and the spirits of ^ turpentine, made by
distilling the sap, is used by painters, and
also in medical preparations. Resin, or rosin
as some call it, is what remains after distilUng
the turpentine and obtaining the spirits. Tar
is made from the limbs of the long-leaved
pine, and from the dead trunks of such as fall
through age, or are blown down by storms.
To procure it, a kiln is formed in some part
of the forest where there are a great many

TREES OF AMERICA. 229

branches or fallen trees ; they are cut into
billets of two or three feet long, and three
inches thick, and then piled in a circle, so
that the ends all point to the centre of the
pile ; the pile is raised on a low flat hillock,
having a ditch around it ; the top of this hil-
lock is a little hollowing towards the centre,
and there is a trough cut from the middle of
it to the ditch on the outside. The pile is
generally about twenty or thirty feet wide,
and ten or twelve high ; but considerably
wider at the top than at the bottom, like a tin
pan : when all the sticks are piled, the top is
covered with pine leaves and turf ; this is to
prevent it from burning too fast ; then fire is
set to it, and as it smoulders and burns, the tar
runs down to the centre of the hillock, and
thence through the trough into the ditch
on the outside, from which it is ladled into
casks. A kiln that is to yield a hundred and
twenty barrels of tar, is eight or nine days
burning."

" Uncle Philip, what is tar used for ?"
"Principally for covering or coating the
bottoms of ships, to make them water-tiglit ;
also for tarring ropes to keep them from rot-
ting ; and a great deal is made into pitch

230 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

which IS only a thicker and better sort of tar.
All these articles, turpentine, resin, spirits of
turpentine, tar, and pitch, are of great use in
arts and manufactures, and valuable materials
of commerce ; and as they are all obtained
from the same tree, the wood of which also is
excellent, you may well consider that as one
of the most useful of all the trees of the
forest.

" The yellow pine is found chiefly in the
Middle States ; but it grows also in the South-
ern. It is a beautiful tree, and of a regular
shape ; its height is seldom more than fifty
or sixty feet, and its diameter about eighteen
inches: the leaves are about four inches long,
very fine, dark green, and always grow in
pairs : the cones are quite small, and every
scale has on it a prickle. The wood is yel-
lowish and of very good quality, as I dare say
you know very well, for it is universally used
in house-building ; particularly for the doors,
stairs, window-frames &c. ; it is as easy to
work as the white, and more durable. Great
quantities of it are exported to England and
the West Indies, but it is becoming scarce.

"In North Carolina there is a mountain
called the Table Mountain, the top and sides

TREES OF AMBiaCA. 231

of which are covered with a species of pine
different from all the others, and not found in
any other part of the country ; for this reason
it is called the Table Mountain pine. The
leaves are about two inches long, very dark
green, and tv/ice as thick as those of any other
sort of pine : the cones are large, shaped ex-
actly like an egg, and covered with thick
short prickles. The turpentine got from this
pine is said to be of superior quality, but the
trees are so rare that very little of it is
made.

" The pond pine is another scarce and
useless variety; it grows but in very small
numbers in the Southern States, on the bor-
ders of ponds, and in small swamps ; the
leaves always grow three together, and are
seven or eight inches in length : the most
remarkable thing about it is, that the cones
almost always grow in pairs upon the oppo-
site sides of the small branches ; they are
bright yellow, and very nearly of the same
size and shape as an egg.

" The last kind of pine is also a native of the
Southern States, and is called the loblolly
pine."

" Unjcle Philip, what does that word loblolly

232 CONVERSATIONS.

mean, do you know, sir ? It seems lo belong
to a great many kinds of trees ; the-re are the
loblolly oak, and the loblolly bay, and now
the loblolly pine."

" I do not know, indeed, my dear, what it
means ; I suspect, however, that it is used to
signify common, for I observe that the trees to
which it is given are all very abundant and
hardy, and grow in almost any kind of soil.
This loblolly pine is quite common in Virginia
and the Carolinas, where it shoots up to the
height of eighty or nineiy feet : the leaves are
very slender, light green, and grow in parties of
three : the cones are long and slender, and
rather handsome : the wood is bad, but it yields
turpentine in abundance. It is used chiefly
for fuel, but sometimes for pumps, and in
making wharves. This ends our talk about
pines ; the next time you come to see me, I
will tell you about the spruces and cedars."

Leaves, Cone, and Seeds of the Cypress.

CONVERSATION IX.

l^^icle Philip teaches his little Visiters how to
make Spruce-heer ; and goes on to tell then«,
about the different hinds of Spruce-trees^
and the Cypress and Cedars ; after this he
describes the Larch, or Hackmatack, and
then brings his Conversations upon the
Trees of America to a close.

" Well, my dears ; you have been taking
a long walk, I suspect : for you look hot and
tired : come and sit down here in the shade.
You shall have some milk : or, if you would
like it better, some spruce-beer."

" Oh yes, some spruce-beer, if you please,
Uncle Philip ; it tastes so cool and fresh
when one is hot and thirsty. Uncle Philip, you
promised to tell us about spruces ; is spruce-
beer made from any part of the spruce-trees V

" Yes, from the young branches of the
black spruce ; there are four kinds of spruce

236 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

that grow in America, and they are known
by the names of black or double spruce, white
or single spruce, hemlock spruce, and balm of
Gilead. And first of the black.

" You remember, I hope, the difference in
the form of the leaves by which you may
always know pines from spruces ?"

" Oh yes, Uncle Philip ; the leaves of the
pines are long, and always grow in pairs or
in bunches of three or four, fastened together
where they stick to the branches : and they
almost always grow from the ends of the
branches ; but the leaves of the spruce are
short, and grow equally all along the branches
like the feathers on the sides of a quill."

" Very v/ell, my dear ; I am glad to find
that you remember.it, for this is an important
distinction. The black spruce is a northern
tree, and seems to prefer cold climates ; in
Canada and the Eastern States, and the
northern parts of New- York, it is very com-
mon ; it is said that in most of the forests
in those parts of the country, the black
spruces are equal in number to a third of all
the other trees together : farther south, it is
scarce, and, indeed, is hardly ever seen except
upon some cold spots among the Alleghany

TREES OF AMERICA. 237

Mountains. The leaves are of a dark green,
almost black, and grow so thickly as to give
the trees a very cheerless and gloomy appear-
ance : they are about half an inch long, and
grow all over the branches as close as they
can stand together : the cones are small, gene-
rally about an inch long, — reddish, and always
hanging down ; they are composed of thin
scales, which open in the fall and let out the
seeds ; the seeds have a sort of wing attached
to them, and are so light that they are carried
about by the winds.

" The height of the black spruce is from
sixty to eighty feet, and the top forms a regular
pyramid: the wood is white, strong, light,
and not brittle, and is much employed for
the yards and small spars of ships ; it contains
very little turpentine, and when burning
snaps like the chestnut. Spruce-beer is made
by boiling the young twigs in water, adding
molasses or sugar, and leaving the liquid to
ferment, or work^ as the country people call
it."

''But, Uncle Philip, how do they make
spruce-beer in cities, where there are no spruce-
trees : I know that a great deal of it is made

238 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

ill New- York, and there are no spruce-trees
about there, are there, sir ?"

'' No ; but they have the essence of spruce,
which is made by allowing the water in which
young twigs of the spruce have been boiled
to simmer over a fire until the greater part
of it has boiled away, and what is left is
thick like honey ; this is very strong of the
spruce, and being put up in bottles, will keep
a long time, and in all climates ; and it
answers just as well for the beer as the fresh
branches.

"The single spruce, or white spruce, as
some call it, grows in the same situations as
the black, but it is not so common anywhere."

"Uncle Philip, why is it called single
spruce ?"

" The only reason, I believe, is, that the
leaves are not so close and numerous ; but
certainly, single is not a good term to express
the difference ; white is a better name, as the
leaves are a great deal lighter ; in fact, their
colour is a very pale green, that looks much
like white in contrast with the dark gloomy
leaves of the black spruce. The white spruce
is a smaller tree too ; never more than fifty
feet high, and the wood is not quite as good."

TREES OF AMERICA. 239

" And do they make spruce-beer from the
branches of this kind too ?"

" They might ; but the leaves have a strong
unpleasant smell, and therefore they are never
used for beer except when the black spruce
is not to be had. There is a good property,
however, about the roots of the white spruce
that makes up for the bad smell of its leaves ;
you remember what I told you about the
great use made of the birch-bark by the
Canadians ?"

" Oh yes, Uncle Philip ; for making ca-
noes."

" Yes ; and if you remember, I told you,
too, that the sheets of bark were sewed to-
gether with the fibrous roots of the white
spruce ; do you know whsii Jibroiis means ?"

" Yes, sir, I believe I do ; I think it means
something like threads ; flax is fibrous, and
so are silk and cotton."

'' Ah, 1 see you understand it very well :
now the fibres of the white spruce-roots are
tough and strong, and by soaking the roots
in water, they can be pulled apart so as to
make very good stout thread. After the sheets
of bark are sewed together, the seams are
coated over with the turpentine or. resipom

240 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

matter that is got from another kind of
spruce, — that called the balm of Gilead ; but
when they cannot get that, they use the tur-
pentine of the white spruce itself, which an-
swers the purpose very well."

" Then the white spruce is not a useless
tree, Uncle Philip."

" Oh no ; very far from it ; although the
wood is none of the best.

"The hemlock spruce, like all the other
kinds, flourishes only in cold climates, and is
seldom found even as far south as New- York.
It is a large tree, and grows slowly ; the
leaves are short and flat, very dark green, and
only grow in two ranks ; that is, one on each
side of the branches : the cones are very
small, about as large as the first joint of my
little finger, and sharp-pointed. The wood
of the hemlock is inferior to both the black and
the white, but still it is considerably used where
white pine is scarce ; its greatest fault is in not
splitting in straight lines, but always crooked ;
its most general use is for flooring. But still
the hemlock is a very useful tree, on account
of its bark, which is good for tanning."

" Is it better than oak-bark, Uncle Philip 7"

TREES OF AMERICA. 241

" No, not better, nor quite as good ; but it
is thought to be the next best after oak-bark,
and where oaks are scarce, the hemlock-bark
is always used instead of it ; I believe that
tanners generally think that the two barks
used together make better leather than either
of them alone. You may always know when
leather has been tanned with hemlock-bark by
its deep red colour."

" Oh, then my shoes are made of that kind
of leather, I suppose, Uncle Philip ; for they
stain my stockings dreadfully."

'• I dare say they are ; the colour of the oak-
bark is neither as red, nor as apt to come out
upon the stockings.

" The fourth and last kind of spruce, as I
told you before, is called the balm of Gileadj
and sometimes American silver fir; this last
name is derived from a peculiarity in the
leaves, which are bright-green on the upper
side, and silvery white on the under."

"And the other name, balm of Gilead, I
suppose is from the turpentine or resinous
matter that is got from it ?"

" Yes ; but this turpentine is not got by
boring holes in. the trees, like that of tha

T

242 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

pines, but collects of itself in little swellings
on the trunk and branches ; and is procured
by breaking these swellings and receiving the
turpentine in bottles ; the turpentine of the
balm of Gilead is a greenish fluid, about
as thick as honey, and has a sharp, biting
taste."

" It is used as a medicine, is it not. Uncle
Philip r

" Yes ; but there is another balm of Gilead
that is much better ; it is got from a very
different sort of plant that grows in Asia.
The balm of Gilead that we are speaking of,
is sometimes given in consumptions, but I
believe it is not much esteemed by physicians.
The wood is very light, and almost useless,
partly because it wants strength, and partly
on account of its small size ; for the silver fir
is but a little tree ; but it is much the most
beautiful of all the spruces, as well from its
regular shape, as from the pleasing colour
and variety of its foliage : its cones always
grow pointing upwards, and they are much
larger than any of the others ; I have seen
them five inches long ; they are of a light
purple colour.

TREES OF AMERICA. 243

VV"e come now to the cedars : these, you
remember, have leaves covered with exceed-
ingly small scales, instead of being smooth
and shining like the leaves of the pines and
spruces ; and besides, they branch out in dif-
ferent directions, instead of being single, and
growing regularly upon the branches as the
others do. There are only four kinds of cedar
in the United States, and one of those is by
some botanists considered a cypress, from the
shape of its cone. Perhaps I had better tell
you about the cypress before we talk of the
cedars, and then you will be able to understand
the description better.

" The cypress is a southern tree ; it is
never seen farther north than Delaware, and
from thence down to the southern extremity
of the country it is constantly found in the
swamps. In the Floridas and Louisiana it is
a magnificent tree, often more than a hundred
and twenty feet high, and from thirty to forty
feet in circumference at the base ; but this is
not to be taken as the actual size of the trunk;
for the cypress, like the large tupelo, has the
strange peculiarity of swelling out to a mon-
strous size just above the ground, and the

244 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

real diameter of the trunk must always be
taken at the height of five or six feet."

' Uncle Philip, I should think the wood-
cutters would not like that; it must give
them a great deal of trouble to cut through
such a quantity of wood."

" That is very true, my boy ; but they
know how to manage it ; they always build
up a scaffold above the swelled part or base, so
that they can cut where the proper size of the
tree begins. There is a curious thing, too,
about the roots ; on those of the very large
trees there are large swellings, sometimes as
big round as a barrel, and quite hollow ; the
negroes make bee-hives of them. The cy-
press is not an ever-green ; the leaves are
small and very much like those of the white
spruce, but not as close and numerous : after
the summer they change from light green to
a dull red, and soon after fall. Boiled in
water they give a fine cinnamon colour, and
are sometimes used for dying. The cones
are hard and round, and about as large as a
plum ; the surface is curiously marked, and
they contain a number of seeds with kernels
in them. The wood is fine-grained, and of a

TREES OF AMERICA. 245

reddish colour ; it is very strong and elastic,
and is lighter and less filled with turpentine
than that of the pines : but its greatest excel-
lence is its durability; well seasoned, it lasts
more than twice as long as any of the species
of pine : it is considerably used in building,
but much more extensively in making shin-
gles, which will last forty years. Where it is
plentiful', it is also much used for posts, and
for water-pipes ; it resists the decaying power
of moisture better than almost any other
wood. To give you an idea of the value
of the cypress, I will tell you that the con-
sumption of shingles made from its wood, has
been calculated at more than a hundred mil-
lions every year ; but I am sorry to say, that
in consequence of this enormous consumption,
the trees are becoming scarce.

" You will now be able to perceive the
points of resemblance and difference between
the cypress and the white cedar, which, as I
said before, is sometimes considered as be-
longing to the same class. I must confess,
however, that in my opinion it is quite dis-
tinct, for it is an ever-green. It is found
chiefly in Virginia and the adjoining States,
and only in wet grounds : in the Dismal

246 CONVERSATIONS ON THE

Swamp in Yirginia it is more abundant than
any other tree, except the cypress. Its height
is about seventy feet, and the thickness of its
trunk three or three and a half; it is straight
and free from branches until within twenty
feet of the top. When cut, it yields a yellow
transparent turpentine that has a pleasant
smell ; but the quantity is very small. The
leaves are quite different from those of the
cypress, being, as I told you, composed of
very small scales, and branching out in vari-
ous directions like coral. The greatest point
of resemblance is in the cones, which are shaped
exactly like those of the cypress, but are a
great deal smaller, — not much larger than a
pea. The wood is light, soft, fine-grained,
and easy to cut ; you can try it for yourselves,
however, for it is of cedar-wood that lead
pencils are generally made ; its colour is
rosy, and it has a pleasant smell. It resists
moisture remarkably well, and for this reason,
as well as its lightness, it is much used for
shingles. Vast quantities of it are also made
into pails, and tubs, and churns. In New-
Jersey the farmers prefer cedar- wood for the
posts of their fences : these posts will last fifty
or sixty years ; and besides all this, it makes

TREES OF AMERICA. 247

good charcoal for gunpowder, and very ex-
cellent lampblack.

" There are two other kinds of cedar that
grow in this country; with one of these, the
red cedar, you are well acquainted, I dare
say, for it grows almost everywhere, from
Maine to Florida. Some call it juniper.
You may know it by its little blue berries."

" Oh, then we do know it. Uncle Philip :
robins and other birds feed on the berries in
winter."

" Yes ; and very glad they are to get them,
when the ground is covered with snow, and
all the other trees are quite bare. I suppose
I need hardly tell you that this kind of cedar
is very small ; but I suspect that you do not
know what is made of the berries."

"Made, Uncle Philip ! I did not know that
any thing was made of cedar-berries."

" It would be better if nothing loas made
from them ; the article I mean is gin ; one
of those poisonous and destructive drinks that
take away men's reason, and make them
worse than the beasts. The wood is <jom-
pact, fine-grained, and very light ; it has a
pleasant odour, too, like the white cedar, and
is equally durable ; but it is too small to be

248 CONVERSATIOMS ON THE

made use of for any purposes of utility : m
those parts of the country where it is found
large enough, it is made into posts, which last
an immense time, and small quantities of it
are exported to England to be made into
pencils. In the Southern States it is very
often used for coffins.

" The third and last kind of cedar is also
called white cedar in the northern parts of the
United States and in Canada, where it grows ;
in the south it is almost unknown : botanists
generally call it arhor vit(B, which means tree
of life ; this name is given to it on account
of its durability. It is generally about fifty
feet high, and a foot and a half thick : it
grows very slowly. The leaves are ever-
green, and much thicker and longer than those
of the red cedar ; when bruised, they give out
a fine aromatic smell. The cones are very
small, — not much larger than an apple-seed.
The bark is smooth and white, and the wood
soft and reddish : the trunk is seldom straight,
and for this reason it is difficult to procure sticks
suitable for building, but it is much esteemed
notwithstandino-, on account of its durability:
I have seen a building in which the timbers
were mostly of the arbo?' vitoi, and though it

TREES OF AMERICA 249

had been built more than sixty years, they were
perfectly sound. Its most general use, how-
ever, is for fencing ; the posts last thirty-five
or forty years, and the rails fifty or sixty.
But even this is nothing to the durability
of the cedars of Lebanon, — enormous trees
that grow in Asia, the wood of which is said
to endure for hundreds of years."

" Uncle Philip, I have read about the cedars
of Lebanon in the Bible ; was not Solomon's
temple built of them ?"

" Yes, partly. They must have been very
plentiful in Solomon's time, but now they are
scarce.

" There is yet one more tree that I must
tell you of, and then we shall have gone
through with the North American forests. It
is very similar to the spruces in many par-
ticulars, but a distinct name is given to it ;
this name is larch : in the northern part§ of
the United States it is commonly called hack-
matack, but larch is the most correct. It is
found in Maine and Vermont, but it is most
common still farther north, — in Canada and
Nova Scotia. In the Middle States it is
scarcely ever seen. It is a noble tree to look
upon, with a straight slender trunk, nearly a

250 CONVERSATIONS.

hundred feet high, and three feet in diameter .
the leaves are shaped hke those of the balm
of Gilead, but they are collected in bunches,
united at the root and spreading out at tht
other end, like the sticks of a fan ; this ar
rangement of the leaves gives to the treep
lingular and pleasing appearance. The conea^
are about the size of an acorn, and very-
abundant. The wood is better than that of
any of the pines or spruces, uniting great
strength with durability almost equal to that
of the cypress : its only fault is its weight,
which makes it unfit for masts. It is chiefly
used for the knees and large timbers of
vessels."

THE END.

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

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